Menlo Micro introduces the industry’s highest power density RF switch

Menlo Micro has started production of the first high performance RF switch (MM5130) manufactured with their proprietary Ideal Switch™ technology. The Ideal Switch™ technology eliminates compromises and trade-offs by combining the benefits of electromechanical and solid-state switches into the best of both worlds.

The MM5130 is designed to handle 25W with ultra-low losses, in a miniaturized wafer-level chip-scale-package (WL-CSP). Historically, this level of performance has been reserved for large RF mechanical relays, which have major drawbacks. With its Ideal Switch™ technology, Menlo Micro has eliminated the compromises that engineers have had to make when selecting between RF mechanical relays and solid-state switches. The MM5130 offers the power handling and RF performance of an electromechanical relay (compared below), with the size, reliability, and speed of a solid-state switch.

These improvements make the MM5130 switch a very attractive solution for a multitude of applications including low loss switched filter banks, tunable filters, step attenuators, and even beam steering antennas for a variety of radio architectures in both commercial and military communications networks. The high-channel density and low losses also make the MM5130 ideal for ultra-compact switch matrices for test and measurement applications.

Chris Giovanniello, Co-founder and SVP Marketing at Menlo Micro, said that they are very excited to announce that the MM5130, and more importantly their Ideal Switch™ manufacturing line, is ready for production. With this milestone, companies will begin to realize their vision of massive reductions in the size, weight, and power across a wide variety of RF subsystems. With over 30 customer design-ins to date for the MM5130 in 5G, aerospace & defense, and test & measurement applications, the number of companies taking advantage of the unique performance benefits of the Ideal Switch™ continues to grow.

Menlo Micro spent the last 30 months completing the transfer and qualification of its Ideal Switch™ manufacturing process, moving from a 4-inch research fab to a new 8-inch high-volume manufacturing line. This allows the company to significantly increase its capacity to millions of units per month in 2021.