Flexible Microelectromechanical filters for telecommunication electronics

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1083688 (Table of Contents)

The telecommunication electronics sector is under intensive growth and research owing to the much needed expansion in functionality and mobility. As part of this change, more flexible and multi-featured products are gaining popularity, paving the way for uninterrupted and high-speed mobile communications. As the telecommunication devices become lighter, smaller, and smarter, they pose stringent constraints and challenges to the researchers of integrated telecommunication electronics. This thesis addresses one such field of research namely, micromachined resonator based filters and introduces a novel design methodology by providing an overall ease and simplification during the design flow. Present day filter applications are both bulky and off chip. An alternative, in the form of surface micromachined filters, which introduces considerable size reduction, exhibits industry-standard Quality factors and provide on chip capability, is studied and expanded upon. The aim of this study is twice fold, one to allow the designers a method to design second order filters with greater flexibility than offered by hitherto standards and established procedures; two, to suggest an instructive guideline for extending the design process for higher order filters. The thesis also lays the foundation for fabrication of micromachined filters with mask fabrication, bill of materials, and processing experiments. It furthermore addresses the practical issues and constraints, such as aging, noise, and stability etc., which plague the transition of these research based prototypes to working systems.