Novel approaches to design tunable devices

In recent years, the development of microwave devices increases drastically due to the emergence of new applications in the field of wireless technology and they have found an ever increasing interest for civil as well as military applications covering areas from high speed wireless communication, body area network, point to point or point to multipoint data links, automotive collision-avoidance radar systems, millimetre-wave imaging and Internet of Things. In this context, and due to spectrum occupation the microwave devices have to be more and more compact and efficient but also more and more flexible, i.e. reconfigurable. To reach the constraints imposed by the tunability challenge, a lot of solutions are proposed, with significant evolution concerning RF transceivers architectures, and basically impact on devices functionalities. Consequently, a lot of topologies and emerging technologies were proposed. Some of them are already used while new ones appear, with on-going competition on reconfigurability potentialities regarding frequency, bandwidth, losses, efficiency, and cost impact. This presentation will give an overview of the actual and future solutions focusing on switches, filters and antennas.