Compact Reflection-Type RF-MEMS Phase Shifter for Beam-Steerable Reflectarrays

Tatyana PURTOVA¹, Till FEGER¹, Thomas LISEC², Bernd WAGNER² and Hermann SCHUMACHER<sup>1

1</sup>University of Ulm, Department of Electron Devices and Circuits, Albert-Einstein-Allee 45, 89081 Ulm, Germany
²Fraunhofer Institute for Silicon Technology ISiT, Fraunhoferstraße 1, D-25524 Itzehoe, Germany

Abstract. Design procedure and measurement results of a one-port reflection-type RF-MEMS phase shifter are presented. The circuit was designed for a 26 GHz beam-steerable reflectarray and provides 360 deg phase shift in steps of about 51 deg. The insertion loss at 26 GHz is below 2.5 dB for all 7 states. With the circuit area of about 1×2 mm² the phase shifter is very compact. The phase shifter was fabricated at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicon technology ISiT (Itzehoe, Germany) using surface micromachining of high-resistivity silicon.