Broad Bandwidth Components for Advanced Microwave Sensors

Emerging military systems, such as the Air Force UAVs, require novel radar, electronic warfare and communication sensors to support global intelligence gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike capabilities. These broadband RF components have to be reconfigurable, multifunctional, impervious to severe electromagnetic environments, with small size and weight, and compatible with the existing and future airborne platforms. Moreover, these sensors should exhibit low insertion loss, low power consumption, highly linear operation and power handling capability of 5 W. In response to the above need, EMAG Technologies in collaboration with Purdue University propose to develop novel, miniaturized, tunable bandpass filters covering the 2-12 GHz range. Highly linear, low-loss RF MEMS varactors will be utilized for the formation of the proposed filters both as lumped and distributed elements. The proposed architecture requires a number of novel technologies that permit excellent RF performance, limited power consumption, high reliability, low size and cost. In addition to that, on-wafer packaging and three-dimensional integration will be utilized for the hermetic sealing of the filters and MEMS varactors. This packaging scheme will be based on EMAG's already developed low-loss, hermetic package for single RF MEMS switches.