Comparative evaluation of MEMS and ferroelectric technologies in phase shifter design

Reducing the cost of phased array antennas has become the subject of considerable interest. The most prominent obstacle to this is the cost of current phase shifter elements (p-i-n diodes, MESFETs, ferrite). All of these are expensive, constituting a significant portion of the total receive-array cost. Additionally, p-i-n diodes and MESFETs introduce significant losses. These losses necessitate additional amplification of the signal, thus complicating the overall system design. New developments in MEMS and ferroelectric technologies promise low loss/high performance phase shifters. In this paper, we present a comparative study of the use of these two technologies in phase shifter design.