  Over the past few years, significant growth has been observed in using MEMS
based passive components in the RF microelectronics domain, especially in
transceiver components. This is due to some excellent properties of the MEMS
devices like low loss, excellent isolation etc. in the microwave frequency
domain where the on-chip passives normally tend to become leakier and degrades
the transceiver performance. This paper presents a comparative analysis between
MEMS-resonator based and MEMS-passives based band-pass filter configurations
for RF applications, along with their design, simulation, fabrication and
characterization. The filters were designed to have a center frequency of 455
kHz, meant for use as the intermediate frequency (IF) filter in superheterodyne
receivers. The filter structures have been fabricated in PolyMUMPs process, a
three-polysilicon layer surface micromachining process.
