Low-Loss Ku-Band Artificial Transmission Line With MEMS Tuning Capability

An artificial transmission line unit cell is presented based on the so-called composite right/left handed transmission line. It is implemented on a microelectromechanical system process on glass, and is suitable for applications such as reconfigurable leaky-wave antennas and series feed networks. The device presents state-of-the-art performance in terms of differential phase shift over losses (38^deg/dB at 14 GHz) and quasi-zero drive power consumption. It is monolithic and has a total footprint of 4 mm².