A Reconfigurable Micromachined Switching Filter Using Periodic Structures

In this paper, a reconfigurable filter using micromachined switches is designed, fabricated, and experimented. An equivalent-circuit model is derived for the reconfigurable cell structure. Extracted parameters show the characteristics of both bandpass and bandstop filters, which can be accurately analyzed using circuit analysis. Coplanar waveguide transmission lines for the reconfigurable filter are also analyzed. The bandpass filter is formed by cascading the unit cell structure. This bandpass filter can be switched to bandstop filter using the micromachined switches and p-i-n diode. Dispersion characteristics are obtained to investigate the electromagnetic wave behavior within the unit cell using Floquet's theorem. Measurement results with micromachined switches show that insertion loss is 1.55 dB for the bandpass filter whereas band rejection level is >20 dB and the insertion loss in the passband is 1.2 dB for the bandstop filter. With the p-i-n diode, the insertion loss is 2.1 dB and the 3-dB bandwidth is 5.2 GHz for the bandpass filter, the 20-dB rejection bandwidth is 5.3 GHz, and the insertion loss in the passband is 1.6 dB for the bandstop filter.