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Date:  Thu, October 10, 2013
Time:  9:30-­‐10:30 AM
Location:  Holmes Hall 389
Speaker:  Wasim Irshad, Purdue University

 Widely tunable RF Filters that are small, cost-effective and offer ultra low power consumption are extremely desirable. Indeed, such filters would allow drastic simplification of RF front-ends in countless applications from cell phones to satellites in space by replacing switched-array of static acoustic filters and YIG filters respectively. Switched array of acoustic filters are de facto means of channel selection in mobile applications such as cell phones. SAW and BAW filters satisfy most criteria needed by mobile applications such as low cost, size and power consumption. However, the trade-off is a significant loss of 4-6 dB in modern cell phone RF front-end. This leads to need for power-hungry amplifiers and short battery life. It is a necessary trade-off since there are no better alternatives. These devices are in mm scale and consume mW. YIG filters dominate applications where size or power is not a constraint but demand excellent RF performance like low loss and high tuning ratio. These devices are measured in inches and require several watts to operate. Clearly, a tunable RF filter technology that would combine the cost, size and power consumption benefits of acoustic filters with excellent RF performance of YIG filters would be extremely desirable and imminently useful. The objective of my doctoral dissertation was to develop such a technology based upon RF-MEMS Evanescent-mode cavity filter. Two novel RF-MEMS devices have been developed address the unique MEMS needs of this technology. Both of these MEMS devices will be presented in this seminar.

About the speaker: Dr. Wasim Irshad is an RF-MEMS expert who has dedicated his life to innovating and pushing the boundaries of what MEMS devices can achieve. He completed his Bachelors, Masters and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. Dr. Dimitrios Peroulis advised his graduate studies and is one of the most prominent research scientists in the field of RF-MEMS. Dr. Irshad is particularly known for his pioneering microfluidics work with Liquid Metal Galinstan for RF applications. He is the inventor of Liquid Metal Droplet (LMD) and Micro-Corrugated Diaphragm (MCD) RF-MEMS. Both of these devices are well-known and highly regarded in the RF-MEMS scientific community for their breakthrough design, innovation and RF performance in tunable resonators and filters.