Advanced High Frequency Tunable Filters for Wide-Band Arrays

Agile Materials and Technologies has successfully demonstrated the ability to design and manufacture high performance, voltage controllable varactors using the ferroelectric material, Barium Strontium Titanate (BST). These highly tunable varactors form the basis for tunable filters and other tunable applications such as impedance matching networks and phase shifters. Agile's varactors are thin-film devices manufactured utilizing industry standard semiconductor manufacturing processes. Agile is proposing to develop widely tunable filters in millimeter wave frequency bands. Agile's varactors are capable of capacitance tuning in excess of 4:1 at low control voltages and are capable of scaling to handle high power levels. Agile believes it can cover the entire 37-52 GHz range in a single filter and this filter can be extremely small, in fact manufactured on a single chip of only a couple of square millimeters in size. The Phase I proposal will focus on two design approaches: one with off-chip inductors for higher Q filters and one with an integrated single chip solution.