Equivalent electrical circuit for designing mems-controlled reflectarray phase shifters

Abstract

This article presents an equivalent electrical circuit for designing Radio-Frequency MEMS-controlled planar phase shifter. This kind of phase shifters has recently been incorporated in reconfigurable reflectarrays. The proposed equivalent circuit depends on the number, the ON/OFF state and the locations of the switches inside the unit cell. Such equivalent circuit is used for determining, with a little computational effort, the two important design parameters i.e., the number and the locations of RF-MEMS switches in the phase shifter cell. These two design parameters then allow a designer to design a phase shifter cell having a linear distribution of a given number of phases over 360° phase range at a single desired frequency.