Low Pull-in-Voltage RF-MEMS Shunt Switch for 5G Millimeter Wave Applications

Abstract

RF MEMS switches have been employed in many commercial and defense applications due to their high potentiality at microwave and millimeter wave frequencies. In this paper, an RF MEMS shunt switch is designed with perforations and without perforations and simulated using iterative meanders for millimeter wave 5G applications. The proposed iterative meander offers a low spring-constant of 0.68 N/m and reduces the pull-in-voltage upto 1.8 V. The proposed perforated switch design is more reliable which operates with less transition time of 11.2 µs with a quality factor of 1.69. The switch possesses high capacitance ratio of 63. During ON condition, the switch shows low insertion loss of − 0.24 dB at 41 GHz and high isolation of − 46.7 dB at 38 GHz. The performance of the switch is analyzed by simulating it using COMSOL Multiphysics 5.2v (FEM tool). The obtained simulation results shows close approximation with the theoretical results and the switch is efficiently used for 5G millimeter wave applications.