A Low Voltage Actuated RF-MEMS Shunt Capacitive Switch

Abstract

A novel design of low actuated voltage shunt capacitive RF-MEMS switch and its analysis have been presented in this paper. The proposed design of the switch is having low actuation voltage and low insertion loss as well. The proposed design also offers a very high isolation. A horizontal structure of bridge membrane is present in the proposed switch and its vertical movement is being controlled by the electrostatics MEMS actuation technique, which actually provides the ON and OFF conditions of the switch. The actuation pad has been fed by the CPW transmission line. The switch performance has been analysed over a wide frequency range from 1 GHz to 40 GHz. The actuation voltage of the proposed design has been observed to be 3.0 Volt for a vertical displacement of 1.5 μm. The fixed-fixed flexures beam structure has been used to obtain the excellent RF Characteristics i.e. Isolation is -43 dB and insertion loss is -0.12 dB at 28 GHZ.