Design and Characterization of an Active Recovering Mechanism for High Performance RF MEMS Redundancy Switches

This paper presents the design and characterization of an active push/pull toggle RF MEMS switch for satellite redundancy networks. The actively controlled pull-up mechanism allows for extended restoring capabilities of the switch in case of ON-state stiction. As a proof of concept an active push/pull MEMS capacitive switch was modeled, designed and manufactured in shunt conguration on a 50 coplanar transmission line. RF measurement results show a return loss better than 15 dB in the 0.1 - 40 GHz range and an insertion loss better than 0.5 dB over the same range. The restoring capability of the switch was experimentally proved up to 9 hours, and a predictive model was proposed for the estimation of the switch time to failure.