Title: Design and analysis of capacitive RF MEMS switch with step structure and meander spring for cellular communication

Authors: Trigunesh Narzary; R. Kumar; Rituraj Bhattacharjee

Addresses: Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering, National Institute of Technology Nagaland, Nagaland, India ' Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering, National Institute of Technology Nagaland, Nagaland, India ' Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering, National Institute of Technology Nagaland, Nagaland, India

Abstract: An electrostatically actuating capacitive RF MEMS switch with a rare step structure and meander spring is designed and analysed in this work. The materials for the dielectric medium between the RF switch and transmission electrode preferred for this work are zirconium dioxide (ZrO₂), niobium pentoxide (Nb₂O₅), and titanium dioxide (TiO₂). Simulations were carried out to investigate the operation of the switch based on the electromechanical and RF parameters. An actuation voltage of 3.88 V with TiO₂ as the dielectric was achieved in the proposed switch with a 2 μm air gap. The radio frequency analysis of the suggested switch achieved maximum isolation of −41.85 dB at 3 GHz with TiO₂ as dielectric and insertion loss of −0.01 dB to −0.16 dB for all the configurations of the designed switch at 1 GHz-30 GHz. The proposed capacitive radio frequency MEMS switch fits well for high radio frequency cellular communication applications.

Keywords: capacitive; radio frequency; MEMS; meander; step structure; actuation voltage; s-parameters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJUWBCS.2021.119134

International Journal of Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems, 2021 Vol.4 No.3/4, pp.147 - 155

Received: 12 Jul 2020
Accepted: 03 Jan 2021
Published online: 24 Nov 2021 *

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