12-throw RF MEMS ohmic contact switch is 'world's first'

9th February 2015

DelfMEMS

Barney Scott

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DelfMEMS has announced that it is to unveil what it believes to be the ‘world's first’ twelve throw, RF MEMS ohmic contact switch at Mobile World Congress 2015. DelfMEMS' RF-MEMS switching solution is able to deliver the performance required for next-gen handsets, LTE-A and beyond, with ultra-low insertion loss and excellent isolation and linearity to enable full uplink carrier aggregation.

The early samples of the SP12T switch, which will be shown at MWC, have performance levels that are comparable to the current market leading solutions, but the company says that for production devices the performance levels will be significantly higher, enabling the full potential of LTE-A and beyond data rates for both upload and download.

“Until now, companies have tended towards the capacitive switch solution route. We chose the harder route of contact or ohmic switching because of the superior performance and have succeeded in creating the world's first, fully functional version that we will be showing customers and press at MWC in Barcelona,” explained Cybele Rolland, CEO, DelfMEMS. “This is a key milestone for the company and we have already signed several contracts, with more in the pipeline, and anticipate shipping in the second half of 2016. RF MEMS switches have been known for many years as outstanding potential solutions for mobile handset RF performance, but have so far failed to see any reasonable level of success either due to cost or reliability concerns. We have solved these issues with our FreeFlex MEMS technology.”