Design of RF-MEMS Switch Integration with Circular Microstrip Patch Antenna

Abstract

This paper presents the design and analysis of a microstrip circular patch antenna, integrated with the RF-MEMS capacitive type switch. Here, two different types of RF-MEMS (Radio frequency Micro-electromechanical systems) switches are proposed, one is a bridge-type and the other is a single-beam type switch. These two switches are designed and simulated by using FEM (Finite Element Model) tool, the pull-in voltages of the two switches are obtained as 1.9 V, 4.9 V. Both switches are integrated with the circular patch antenna and measure the device characteristics and analysed in HFSS (High Frequency Structure Simulator) tool. The work is focused on analysing the performance of circular micro strip patch antenna such as return loss, radiation pattern, gain, VSWR (voltage standing wave ratio) and bandwidth and compared the performances of both switches are in ON and OFF condition. The circular microstrip patch antenna with RF-MEMS switches are designed to achieve antenna re-configurability at low frequencies up to 15 GHz.