US 2026/0302583 A1 · SWITCHED CAPACITOR BANK UTILIZING OPEN-STUB TRANSMISSION LINES

Abstract

The technology described herein is directed towards a tunable capacitor device in the form of a capacitor bank with switches that control the coupled or decoupled states of selectable open stub capacitors with respect to a transmission line, e.g., connected in a single-port coplanar waveguide configuration. By allowing any combination of N capacitors to be activated independently or simultaneously, the design enables two to the power N selectable states, where each state corresponds to a specific capacitance or combination of capacitances. In one example implementation, the capacitor bank includes six open stub capacitors and two multistate (single pole, three throw) RF switches. The multistate switches can include phase-change material-based junctions, whereby a controller can select the operating capacitance of the device by determining the conductive or non-conductive state of each switch junction by applying a set or reset pulse to a heating element associated with that junction.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A device, comprising:

a radio frequency (RF) port;
an RF transmission line coupled to the RF port;
and
a capacitor bank coupled to the RF transmission line, the capacitor bank comprising a group of respective open stub capacitors coupled to respective RF switches,
wherein the respective RF switches are controllable to selectively couple the respective open stub capacitors of the group of respective open stub capacitors to the RF transmission line to determine an operational capacitance value of the device from among selective capacitance values that are based on respective capacitance values of the respective open stub capacitors, and based on which ones of the respective open stub capacitors are selectively coupled to the RF transmission line.

2 more elements

A method, comprising:

electrically coupling, by a system comprising at least one controller, radio frequency (RF) signals obtained at an RF transmission line to one or more respective selectable open stub capacitors of a device, the electrically coupling comprising:
obtaining a specified capacitance value;
and
controlling respective switches on the device to couple a set of the one or more respective selectable open stub capacitors, which corresponds to the specified capacitance value, to the RF transmission line to interact with the RF signals,
wherein the respective switches comprise respective phase change material switches, and
wherein the controlling of the respective switches comprises controlling respective heating elements, corresponding to the respective phase change material switches, to set one or more of the respective phase change alloy material switches to one or more respective conductive states, or to reset one or more of the respective phase change alloy material switches to one or more respective nonconductive states.

3 more elements

A system, comprising:

a controller;
a tunable capacitive device coupled to the controller, the tunable capacitive device, comprising:
a radio frequency (RF) port;
an RF coplanar waveguide transmission line coupled to the RF port;
and
respective open stub capacitors configured to be coupled to the RF coplanar waveguide transmission line via respective RF switches,
wherein, to determine an operating capacitance of the tunable capacitive device with respect to RF signals on the RF transmission line, the controller controls respective conductive or nonconductive states of the respective RF switches to respectively couple or decouple the respective open stub capacitors from the RF coplanar waveguide transmission line.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Switched capacitor bank utilizing open-stub transmission lines

Life of this patent

Switched capacitor bank utilizing open-stub transmission lines

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20