1999 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters
Volume 9 Number 12, December 1999

X-Band RF MEMS Phase Shifters for Phased Array Applications

Page 517.

Abstract:

In this letter, development of a low-loss radio frequency (RF) microelectromechanical (MEMS) 4-bit X-band monolithic phase shifter is presented. These microstrip circuits are fabricated on 0.021-in-thick high-resistivity silicon and are based on a reflection topology using 3-dB Lange couplers. The average insertion loss of the circuit is 1.4 dB with the return loss >11 dB at 8 GHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is a lowest reported loss for X-band phase shifter and promises to greatly reduce the cost of designing and building phase arrays.

References

1. J. J. Yao and M. F. Chang, "A surface micromachined miniature switch for telecommunication applications with signal frequencies from dc to 4 GHz," in Transducers'95, pp. 384-387.
2. L. E. Larson, R. H. Hackett, M. A. Melendes, and R. F. Lohr, "Micromachined microwave actuator (MIMAC) technology--A new tuning approach for microwave integrated circuits," in IEEE Microwave Theory Tech. Symp., 1991, pp. 27-30.
3. C. L. Goldsmith, Zhimin Yao, Susan Eshelman, and David Denniston, "Performance of low loss RF MEMS capacitive switches," IEEE Microwave Guided Wave Lett., vol. 8, pp. 269-271, Aug. 1998.
4. S. Pacheco, C. T. Nguyen, and L. P. B. Katehi, "Micromechanical electrostatic K-band switches," in IEEE Microwave Theory Tech. Symp., 1998, pp. 1569-1572.
5. B. Glance, "A fast low-loss microstrip p-I-n phase shifter," IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-27, pp. 14-16, Jan. 1979.