A family of MEMS tunable filters for advanced RF applications

This work reports progress towards development of producible adaptively tunable microstrip band-pass filters for use in ultra-wide-band (UWB) systems using capacitive RF MEMS switch technology. Six filters were designed, fabricated and tested to achieve higher level sub-system specifications covering 2 to 18 GHz in small steps and achieve good rejection within the bands. While low-loss was desired, it was not the primary objective and filters achieved loss of 4-10 dB depending on the frequency and state. Electromagnetic modeling was used extensively to achieve high fidelity designs. Future improvements are being explored for the second iteration designs including reducing loss and reducing total filter count.