This article is part of the series CMOS RF Circuits for Wireless Applications.

Open Access Research Article

Using MEMS Capacitive Switches in Tunable RF Amplifiers

John Danson*, Calvin Plett and Niall Tait

Author Affiliations

Department of Electronics, Carleton University Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1S 5B6

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EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 2006, 2006:016518 doi:10.1155/WCN/2006/16518


The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://jwcn.eurasipjournals.com/content/2006/1/016518


Received:15 October 2005
Revisions received:27 February 2006
Accepted:14 March 2006
Published:16 May 2006

© 2006 Danson et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

A MEMS capacitive switch suitable for use in tunable RF amplifiers is described. A MEMS switch is designed, fabricated, and characterized with physical and RF measurements for inclusion in simulations. Using the MEMS switch models, a dual-band low-noise amplifier (LNA) operating at GHz and GHz, and a tunable power amplifier (PA) at GHz are simulated in m CMOS. MEMS switches allow the LNA to operate with 11 dB of isolation between the two bands while maintaining dB of gain and sub- dB noise figure. MEMS switches are used to implement a variable matching network that allows the PA to realize up to 37% PAE improvement at low input powers.

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