Scale-changing technique for the electromagnetic modeling of MEMS-controlled planar phase shifters

A scale changing approach is proposed for the electromagnetic modeling of phase-shifter elements used in reconfigurable microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-controlled reflectarrays. Based on the partition of the discontinuity plane in planar sub-domains with various scale levels, this technique allows the computation of the phase shift from the simple cascade of networks, each network describing the electromagnetic coupling between two scale levels. The high flexibility of the approach associated with the advantages of the integral equations formulations renders this original approach powerful and rapid. The scale-changing technique allows quasi-instantaneous computing of the 1024 phase shifts achieved by ten RF-MEMS switches distributed on the phase-shifter surface. Moreover, the proposed approach is much better than the finite-element-method-based software in time costing. Experimental data are given for validation purposes. Index Terms--Multiscale structures, planar phase shifter, reflectarrays, RF microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).