A low-loss Ka-band distributed metal-air-metal MEMS phase shifter

A 4-bit wideband distributed phase shifter has been developed for Ka-band operation. The design results show that the digital shifter has four basic phases of 11.25°, 22.5°, 45°, 90° and thus 16 kinds of phase states can be constructed from the combination of them. The simulation results also demonstrates that the insertion coefficient is better than -1.37 dB, the phase error is less than 3.983° at 30GHz, and the reflection coefficient is lower than -10dB from 25GHz to 35GHz for each state. This low-loss distributed metal-air-metal MEMS phase shifter can be well applied to phased arrays.