Wideband on-chip RF MEMS switches in a BiCMOS technology for 60 GHz applications

In this paper, an on-chip RF MEMS capacitive switch is designed and simulated with a 0.13 μm IBM SiGe BiCMOS technology for the first time. Mechanical and electrical design of the high frequency switch are discussed in this paper. Special consideration to improve Con/Coff ratio of the switch is used with multi metal layers configuration. The switch is designed for 60 GHz wireless applications, the results show that the switch has the insertion loss is less than 0.2 dB when the switch is off, while the isolation loss is larger than 15 dB when the switch is on over the frequency from 40 to 70 GHz. The calculated pull-in voltage of the switch is only about 10 volts, the switch is compact comparing with the reported PIN diode RF switch and has the membrane dimension of 10 μm × 240 μm.