Design and Simulation of Capacitive MEMS Switch for Ka Band Application

Abstract

In this paper, RF MEMS switch with capacitive contact is designed and analyzed for Ka band application. A fixed-fixed beam/meander configuration has been used to design the switch for frequency band 10 GHz to 40 GHz. Electromagnetic and electromechanical analysis of three-dimensional (3D) structure/design has been analyzed in multiple finite element method (FEM) based full-wave simulator (Coventorware and high-frequency structure simulator). A comparative study has also been carried out in this work. The high resistivity silicon substrate (tanδ=0.010, ρ>8 kΩ-cm, ϵr=11.8) with a thickness of 675±25 μm has been taken for switch realization. The designed structure shows an actuation voltage of around 9.2 V. Impedance matching for the switch structure is well below 20 dB, loss in upstate, i.e., insertion loss >0.5 dB, and isolation of >25 dB throughout the frequency band is observed for the aforesaid structure. Furthermore, to increase the RF parameters, AIN dielectric material has been used instead of SiO2 resulting in capacitance in downstate that increases hence improved the isolation. The proposed switch can be utilized in various potential applications such as any switching/tunable networks phased-array radar, reconfigurable antenna, RF phase shifter, mixer, biomedical, filter, and any transmitter/receiver (T/R) modules.