Performance Simulation of a Microwave Micro-Electromechanical System Shunt Switch Using Chatoyant

In this paper we demonstrate the capabilities of our mixed-signal, multi-domain system level simulation tool, Chatoyant, to model and simulate an RF MEMS shunt switch. We verify our mechanical simulations and analysis by comparison to results from commercial simulation packages, ANSYS and CoventorWare. We show that our modeling accuracy and simulation speed are comparable to these commercial tools for specific analysis. We conclude by showing the unique capabilities of a system tool based on a modular hierarchal approach that allows one to model not only the individual components of the system but also the subtle interactions resulting in specific system behaviors.Michael Bails received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Vermont in 1995 and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2002 (cum laude). He worked as an undergraduate researcher in optical MEMS for Benchmark Photonics, a Pittsburgh-based start-up company from 2001 to 2002. Mr. Bails is currently pursuing his M.S. in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is a recipient of the Rath Fellowship. His interests are in MEMS modeling with an emphasis on statistical process variations. Mr. Bails is a student member of IEEE.José A. Martínez is an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh. He received his MS from the University of Pittsburgh (2000) in Electrical Engineering. He received the BS (magna cum laude) in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad de Oriente (UDO), Venezuela, in 1993. Mr. Martínez was granted the José Feliz Rivas’ medal for high academic achievement by the Venezuelan government (1993), and scholarships by the Venezuelan Fundayacucho Society (1993) and CONICIT-UDO (1994) institution. Since 1997 he has been working in the Optoelectronic computing group at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests include behavioral simulation, reduction order techniques, modeling of MEMs and OMEMs, CAD, VLSI and computer architecture. Mr. Martínez is a member of IEEE/LEOS, and OSA.Steven P. Levitan is the John A. Jurenko Professor of Computer Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received the B.S. degree from Case Western Reserve University in 1972. From 1972 to 1977 he worked for Xylogic Systems designing hardware for computerized text processing systems. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. During that time he also worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, and Viewlogic Systems, as a consultant in HDL simulation and synthesis. He was an Assistant Professor from 1984 to 1986 in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts. In 1987, Dr. Levitan joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at the University of Pittsburgh where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science. He is Past Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA). He was awarded the ACM/SIGDA Distinguished Service Award for over a decade of service to ACM/SIGDA and the EDA Industry in 2002. He is on the technical advisory board for The Technology Collaborative. He is a senior member of the IEEE/Computer Society and a member of the Optical Society of America, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the International Society for Optical Engineering. He is a member of the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference Executive Committee.Jason Boles received the B.S. degree in computer engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, in 2001, where he is currently pursuing the M.S. degree in electrical engineering. His research interests include hardware acceleration techniques for simulation, system level modeling, computer-aided design (CAD), as well as systems-on-chip design and verification. Mr. Boles is a student member of IEEE.Ilya V. Avdeev is currently with ANSYS, Inc (Canonsburg, PA). He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees both in mechanical engineering from St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University (Russia) in 1997 and 1999 respectively. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003. His dissertation was on modeling strongly-coupled MEMS. He has been an inaugural John Swanson Doctoral Fellow and was awarded numerous scholarships and personal grants during his undergraduate and graduate studies. His research interests include mathematical modeling of coupled-field effects, new finite element techniques and methods, design and simulation of MEMS/NEMS, and acoustics. He is a member of ASME and IEEE.Michael R. Lovell is the Associate Dean for Research and an Associate Professor of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering in the School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Lovell received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1994 from the University of Pittsburgh. He joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at Pittsburgh in January of 2000 after three years of service as an Assistant Professor at the University of Kentucky and four years of service as a senior development engineer at ANSYS Inc. Professor Lovell is a W. K. Whiteford Endowed Faculty Fellow, has served as the Executive Director of the Swanson Center for Product Innovation since May of 2000, and has been the Director of the Swanson Institute for Technical Excellence since September of 2002. Among his accomplishments, Professor Lovell is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award (1997), the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award (1999), and won the FAG Outstanding International Publication on Bearings (1998). Dr. Lovell’s primary research interests are in the areas of tribology, advanced computation, and micro and nano systems.Donald M. Chiarulli, Professor of Computer Science. Dr. Chiarulli received his BS degree (Physics, 1976) from Louisiana State University, MSc (Computer Science, 1979) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and PhD (Computer Science, 1986) from Louisiana State University. He was an Instructor/Research Associate at LSU from 1979 to 1986, and has been at the University of Pittsburgh since 1986. Dr. Chiarulli’s research interests are in photonic and optoelectronic computing systems architecture. Dr Chiarulli’s research has been recognized with Best Paper Awards at the International Conference on Neural Networks (ICNN-98) and the Design Automation Conference (DAC-00). He is also the co-inventor on three patents relating to computing systems and optoelectronics. He has served on the technical program committees of numerous conferences for both research and education issues. Dr. Chiarulli serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Systems and is a member of the IEEE. SPIE, and OSA.