Design and fabrication of low-loss RF MEMS switches for a broadband reflectarray

This paper presents the design, fabrication and testing of capacitive RF MEMS switches for microwave/mm-wave applications on high-resistivity silicon substrate or glass. The feasibility study and demonstrator fabrication of a new concept of reflector network using MEMS switch based phase-shifters concept for space antennas is presented. These switches can be accurately modeled using 3-D static solvers. The loss in the up-state position is equivalent to the CPW line loss and is 0.1-0.3 dB at 10-40 GHz. It is seen that the capacitance, inductance and series resistance can be accurately extracted from DC-40 GHz S-parameter measurements. The reflector array antennas utilization for phase control avoids the use of very expensive directive antennas and covers a very large frequencies range. We will deal with the configuration, the composition and arrangement of MEMS switches, used to control the phase shift of the electromagnetic wave reflected by each elementary cell.