A comparative study between a micromechanical cantilever resonator and MEMS-based passives for band-pass filtering application

Abstract

Over the past few years, significant growth has been observed in using MEMS based passive components in the RF microelectronics domain, especially in transceiver components. This is due to some excellent properties of the MEMS devices like low loss, excellent isolation etc. in the microwave frequency domain where the on-chip passives normally tend to become leakier and degrades the transceiver performance. This paper presents a comparative analysis between MEMS-resonator based and MEMS-passives based band-pass filter configurations for RF applications, along with their design, simulation, fabrication and characterization. The filters were designed to have a center frequency of 455 kHz, meant for use as the intermediate frequency (IF) filter in superheterodyne receivers. The filter structures have been fabricated in PolyMUMPs process, a threepolysilicon layer surface micromachining process.I.

Microelectromechanical system cantilever-based frequency doublers

“…Electrical connections from the pads to the beam and I/O-electrodes have also been realized using the Poly0 layer. The two cantilever beam resonators have been simulated in CoventorWare finite element method (FEM)–based simulation software (Basu et al, 2011; Coventor, 2008), and modal analyses have been performed to determine the mode shapes and the corresponding modal frequencies. The first vibration mode for the 76.75-µm-long beam is at 455 kHz, the simulated modal shape for which is shown in Figure 2(b).…”