In this work, several reconfigurable antennas are presented and discussed. The antennas to be presented cover a wide range of designs such as fractal antennas, triangular antennas, dipoles and monopoles with variable sleeves. All these antennas make use of MEMS switches, to make them reconfigurable. Some of the challenges that the designer has to face in biasing and integrating these switches w...

This paper discusses issues relating to the reliability and methods for employing high-cycle life testing in capacitive RF MEMS switches. In order to investigate dielectric charging, transient current spectroscopy is used to characterize and model the ingress and egress of charges within the switch insulating layer providing an efficient, powerful tool to investigate various insulating material...

Commercial Applications Solid state and electromagnetic relay switches are being replaced by MEMS switches due to their lower costs and increased application performance. Some of the benefits of MEMS switches include low power consumption, long life cycle, linearity and increased switching speeds. Applications include highspeed digital channel switching in automated test equipment, filter bank ...

This paper presents the design and implementation of a reconfigurable reflectarray element design using commercially available RF MEMS switches. This reconfigurablity allows for dynamic control of individual radiating elements by electronically manipulating the switch configuration. The reflectarray element chosen here consists of a microstrip patch on the top surface with a slot in the ground ...

The present work investigates the results of different characterization methods for the dielectric charging phenomenon applicable to metal–insulator–metal (MIM) capacitors and electrostatically actuated microelectro-mechanical-systems (MEMS). The discharge current transients (DCT), thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC) and Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) assessment methods hav...

During this project the research focused on the following topics: a) the development of a MEMS reconfigurable Sierpinski antenna on LCP substrate; b) the development of a low cost localized packaging technique for RF MEMS switches integrated on a multilayer organic substrate (this is extremely important for the switch reliability that will be required in the reconfigurable antenna system); c) t...

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2009.933592 R adio frequency (RF) microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switches and varactors, developed in 1996–2002 for lowloss switching/routing circuits and X-band (8–12 GHz) to millimeter-wave (mm-wave) (30–120 GHz) phase shifters, have seen increasing applications in tunable fi lters, tunable antennas, and reconfi gurable matching networks. RF MEMS d...

The need for multiband, multimode band switching at low insertion loss while maintaining excellent linearity in mobile phones is driving the need for RF MEMS-based switches. Since this switching problem gets even more acute as new complex waveforms, such as WiMAX are added to this mix, this article looks at the current state of development in RF MEMS switches and discusses its impact on 3G cell...