Design of MEMS Controlled Phased Shifter Using SCT

The development of an original method called Scaled Changing Technique (SCT) has led to the fast analysis of planar reconflgurable phase-shifters presenting a great number of phase states. Phase-shifters have been designed for obtaining 360 - phase-shift range and by taking into account the losses. Re∞ectarrays using Radio-frequency Micro-mechanical Switches (RF-MEMS) is an emerging technology for reconflgurable and scanning antennas. In this paper, the planar phase-shifter is composed of 3 metallic patches and 10 RF-MEMS (see Fig. 1). The up and down states of the RF-MEMS control the phase-shift by tuning the slot length. A phase-shifter cell with 10 switches presents 2 10 = 1024 available conflgurations: in order to predict the phase-shift for each conflg- uration, an electromagnetic simulation tool has been developed. This tool has been speciflcally dedicated to the study of these MEMS-controlled planar phase-shifter (1,2). Thanks to this spe- ciflc tool, the fast design of phase-shifter cells covering the overall 360 - phase-shift range has been performed.