Reconfigurable antennas using RF-MEMS research in Turkey

A review of the on-going research in Turkey, -in Middle East Technical University (METU)-, on tunable microwave components and reconfigurable antennas produced by RF MEMS technology is presented in this paper. As a key element of reconfigurable structures, several capacitive contact shunt RF MEMS switches are designed, fabricated and measured. Lifetime measurements show that these switches can operate more than 3.2 billion cycles with a bipolar actuation without any degradation in performance. Design and measurement results of some RF MEMS components fabricated in microelectronics fabrication facilities of METU such as switches, DMTL phase shifters, tunable impedance matching circuits, frequency tunable antennas, electronically scanning arrays and reflectarrays are presented focusing on the latest results.