This paper presents an investigation into the viability of a new route for the fabrication of titanium-based MEMS RF switches for harsh environment applications. Titanium’s intrinsic toughness and corrosion resistance suggest that it would be highly suitable for such applications and recently developed titanium micromachining technologies now make exploration of this potential possible. Two des...

We present a reconfigurable spiral antenna for use in adaptive MIMO systems. The antenna is capable of changing the sense of polarization of the radiated field. It is fabricated by using an RF-MEMS technology compatible withmicrowave laminate substrates developed within the author’s group. The proposed antenna structure is built on a number of rectangular-shaped bent metallic strips interconnec...

Micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) have seen a very steep progression in R&D in the 1980s and 1990s, both in academia and industry. The rapid growth has been enabled by new fabrication methods derived from semiconductor integrated circuit manufacturing. These are basically lithography, thin film deposition dry and wet etching, which were tailored for MEMS purposes, since MEMS often uses si...

Improving the power handling capability of direct contact RF MEMS switches requires a knowledge of conditions at the contact. This paper models the temperature rise in a direct contact RF MEMS switch, including the effects of electrical and thermal contact resistance. The maximum temperature in the beam is found to depend strongly on the power dissipation at the contact, with almost no contribu...

The feasibility of integrating the RF MEMS switches in space and wireless communication systems has generated tremendous interest in related design, fabrication and characterization methodologies. The space applications make long term reliability of the devices a very pertinent issue and involves both the process and device characterization. In this paper we describe the experimental setup and ...

size, support to heterogeneous network which drive the requirements for multiband support. Self-similar shaped structure have useful applications in cellular telephone and microwave communications etc. Video conferencing, streaming video are main applications that are included in future networks and requirements for these applications are high data rates which require to have high bandwidth. Bu...

Micromechanical RF filters and reference oscillators based on recently demonstrated vibrating on-chip micromechanical resonators with Q’s >10,000 at 1.5 GHz, are described as an attractive solution to the increasing count of RF components (e.g., filters) expected to be needed by future multi-band wireless devices. With Q’s this high in on-chip abundance, such devices might also enable a paradig...

This paper concerns a new design of RF MEMS switch combined with an innovative process which enable low actuation voltage (<5V) and avoid stiction. First, the structure described with principal design issues, the corresponding antistiction system is presented and FEM simulations are done. Then, a short description of the process flow based on two non polymer sacrificial layers. Finally, RF meas...

In this report we introduce the procedure for performing a thermo mechanical design and analysis of thermal GaAs-based MEMS devices. It will provide the procedure how thermal analysis should be made and model equations used to describe conduction, convection, radiation and mechanical effects caused by nonhomogenous temperature distribution. This is demonstrated on the design of Micromechanical ...

In RF-MEMS packaging, next to the protection of movable structures, optimization of package electrical performance plays a very important role. In this work, a wafer-level packaging process has been investigated and optimized in order to minimize electrical parasitic effects. The package concept used is based on a wafer-level bonding of a capping silicon substrate with throughsubstrate intercon...