Monolithic integration of RF-MEMS within CMOS

The evolution of mobile air interface standards continues to proliferate the modes and bands that must be supported in mobile devices. The mobile RF front-end has seen limited integration due to the diverse technologies required to meet the stringent performance requirements and poor scaling due to physical power and wavelength limitations. Programmable/tunable RF front-ends have been considered for many years but technologies providing sufficient performance at low cost were not available. We present a tunable RF product platform based on RF-MEMS integrated within CMOS that enables programmable front-ends and early products based on that platform.