Miniaturized RF MEMS switch cells for crossbar switch matrices

This paper proposes miniaturized RF MEMS switch cell units for wideband scalable switch matrices. Two switch cells named type 1 and type 2, each has four and three MEMS switches respectively, are presented. Both of the cells are miniaturized in physical dimensions. They are 340 μm × 340 μm. To authors´ knowledge, these are the smallest cell units for RF MEMS switch matrices ever reported. RF performance of the proposed switch cell units are presented. Both of the designs exhibit excellent RF performance. The measured results demonstrated return loss (S11 and S44) better than 20 dB for both, while maintaining isolation (S41) better than 20 dB for state 1, across DC to 40 GHz bandwidth for both types. At state 2, 20 dB isolation is recorded across the bandwidth of interest. They also show better than 20 dB return loss (S11).