* Formerly with Lucent Technologies/Agere Systems (Breinigsville, PA) Abstract Research on micromachines or MEMS technology has been ongoing for more than a decade. Early work focused on biomedical, printing and airbag applications. Only recently has this technology been applied to telecommunications networks. This new micro-optics technology, known as Optical MEMS, is enabling a new generation...

—The measurement precision of Micro Electronic Mechanical System (MEMS) accelerometer are influenced by zero drift, scale factor and installation error. In order to increase the measurement accuracy of the MEMS accelerometer, an improved calibration method is proposed on the basis of traditional six position method. The raw measurements of the MEMS accelerometer not divided by the scale factor...

With their extremely low mass and volume, low power consumption and tight integration with electronics, MEMS sensors and actuators are extremely appealing for reducing the size and mass of spacecraft without sacrificing functionality. In view of the harsh and remote environment of space, reliability and qualification is the crucial issues that are holding back MEMS from playing a larger role in...

The sensitivity of MEMS devices to radiation is reviewed, with an emphasis on radiation levels representative of space missions. While silicon and metals generally do not show mechanical degradation at the radiation levels encountered in most missions, MEMS devices have been reported to fail at doses of as few krad, corresponding to less than one year in most orbits. Radiation sensitivity is li...

Packaging is one of the major cost drivers for MEMS devices. Currently wire bonding is the dominant method for electrically connecting MEMS chips to substrate. Using self-alignment a method for packaging multiple MEMS at the same time has been developed. The presented process achieves high throughput and precise alignment at low cost. The Controlled Collapse Reflow Chip Joining (C-4) process ha...

The K-band microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) tunable band-pass filter, with a wide-frequency tunable range and miniature size, is able to fulfill the requirements of the multiband satellite communication systems. A novel 21.69–24.36 GHz MEMS tunable band-pass filter is designed, analyzed, fabricated and measured. This paper also designs and analyzes an inductively tuned slow-wave resonator,...

In the current communications market, there exists a great demand for devices, which function as passive signal processing units. High performance and small size are identified to be the bottlenecks to meet market demand in communications area[1,3]. MEMS or micromachining technology can yield small, low weight and high performance components to replace the currently used off-chip components. Th...