Tunable capacitor series/shunt design for integrated tunable wireless front end applications

This paper describes the design of a novel tunable RF-MEMS capacitor that is fabricated in a 0.18 μm monolithically integrated RF-MEMS, 50 V LDMOS, 5 V CMOS technology. The novelty of the designs begins with the ability to use a single design for series or shunt capacitors and the ability to distribute the actuator plate around the capacitor in order to develop maximum capacitance. The capacitor structure is a metal-oxide-metal composite, which allows the temperature coefficient to be minimized. The MEMS capacitor has been demonstrated in arrays of 64 tunable capacitors that will be used in tunable solutions for wireless front end applications.