A Comparative Study of Diverse RF-MEMS Switch Design Concepts Experimentally Verified up to 110 GHz for Beyond-5G, 6G and Future Networks Applications

Future broad application paradigms like beyond-5G (B5G), 6G and super-Internet of things (IoT) will bring significant disruption in all the segments of the physical infrastructure ensuring such services, from the core (cloud) to the edge of the network. Substantial rearchitecting will be necessary to allow proper functioning of a highly-diversified space-air-ground-sea physical infrastructure, along with operation at frequency ranges spanning from sub-GHz, to millimeter-waves (mm-Waves), again to sub-THz (100–300 GHz) and above. In this work, we focus on the radio frequency (RF) portion of the infrastructure, and in particular on micro-relays for channel commuting and reconfiguration of passive elements. To this end, we report on high-performance and highly-miniaturized micro-switches based on microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) technology, known as RF-MEMS. A few different design concepts of RF-MEMS-based series ohmic switches are reported, discussed and compared, with the support of finite element method (FEM) modeling and RF experimental characterization up to 110 GHz.