Wide-band multiferroic quartz MEMS antennae

Abstract

We describe a pair of quartz MEMS resonators integrated into a single vacuum package for use as a wide-band RF receiver. The resonators are connected to integrated sustaining circuits for oscillator operation and are used within a phase lock loop in which one oscillator is used as the reference. The other resonator is coated with a magnetostrictive layer which induces a frequency shift proportional to an applied external magnetic field. This frequency shift is detected by the phase lock loop and its feedback signal to a voltage controlled oscillator circuit is used as the antenna output. Thus, the bandwidth of the antenna is determined by the bandwidth of the phase lock loop and not the Q of the resonator.