A novel 2-pole MEMS tunable bandpass filter for satellite communication applications

Two low loss, high performance tunable micro-electromechanical filters have been investigated for communications and satellite applications. The 2-pole bandpass filter including two short folded resonators and two transmission zeros is considered. The folded resonators result in a small size of 2.4 × 2 mm2. Two tunable capacitor switch banks of MEMS switches are used to tune the center frequency. The first proposed switches are cantilever series switches and the second switches are shunt switches. The tuning range is from 4.075 GHz to 6.3 GHz with a bandwidth of 4% (200 MHz). The results show an insertion loss of 0.7 dB and return loss more than 24 dB over the tuning range of 44%.

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