An Integrated Design Flow for System Performance Assessment of Reconfigurable RF MEMS Frontends

The design methodologies for RF MEMS are still driven under the one-device, one-application paradigm. Conventional design flows isolate the design of RF MEMS from the active and passive components in a system. This hinders the system design from a seamless application-oriented perspective.

For the first time, this thesis presents a novel multiphysical design methodology applied to the integration of ASICs and RF MEMS in heterogeneous systems. The developed methods are demonstrated with selected RF MEMS modules as part of a Long Term Evolution (LTE) transceiver architecture. The methodology consists of cross-hierarchical design and evaluation approaches tailored explicitly at different abstraction levels. From a bottom-up perspective, the dominant characteristics and behavior of the RF MEMS are modeled at the component level. At the RF MEMS module level, the focus lies on the integration of RF MEMS with its required driving stages and the interconnection with external components. The module performance is assessed at the RF functional level and provides the input to the communication system level, where standardized performance metrics based on an LTE transceiver are applied. Such an approach simplifies the identification of critical RF MEMS design parameters that impact the overall system performance. This information provides insightful feedback on the optimization areas of the RF MEMS characteristics.

The complexity related to the design, manufacturing requirements, and integration of RF MEMS in a seamless design process is abstracted on schematic-based models suitable for communication system evaluation. The novel methodology developed in this thesis brings forward the inherent advantages of RF MEMS to meet the demanding requirements in modern RF frontends.