A Packaged MEMS-Based 5-bit $X$-Band High-Pass/Low-Pass Phase Shifter

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the first packaged microelectromechanical systems-based phase shifter using high-pass/low-pass circuit topology. The device was fabricated with a process resembling available low-cost commercial Si and SiGe processes, and demonstrates an average loss of 4.5 dB with an rms phase error better than 10deg for 8-12 GHz. Thermal compression bonding is used to package the phase shifter with hermeticity confirmed by Military Standard 883G, Method 1014.12. The total shifter area is 9.2 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . Performance is compared to and found competitive with phase shifters using more expensive GaAs and BST technologies, which are less easily used in system-on-chip applications.