Developments in the telecommunication systems are significantly relying on electronic components capable to address functionalities related to the corresponding signals. Radio Frequency Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (RF MEMS) were introduced more than two decades ago and due to their exceptional ensemble of properties immediately attracted significant attention across the RF community. Nowadays, owing to their unique ability to satisfy the needs of the emerging RF technologies (such as of the 5G), a novel perspective has been offered for RF MEMS and this revived the research attention around the field. Current topics of interest include RF applications operating under high RF-power levels and/or at the higher micro- or at the millimeter wave frequency bands.

This talk will present the operation principles of RF MEMS capacitive switches and a summary of the related research developments over the recent years at MRG-IESL-FORTH group with emphasis given on implementations related to high power applications.