Liwei Lin (Advisor)

Micromechanical resonant switches (“resoswitches”) that harness the high-Q resonance and nonlinear dynamical properties of micromechanical structures are demonstrated that can achieve higher switching speed, better reliability (even under hot switching), and lower actuation voltage, all by substantial factors, over existing RF MEMS switches. Various mechanical structures (low to high resonance frequencies) with different structural and contact materials (medium to low resistances) are designed and fabricated to verify the advantages predicted by theory. Ample amounts of data were...

Lidar (light detection and ranging) technology has the potential to revolutionize the way automated systems interact with their environments and their users. Most lidar systems in the industry today rely on pulsed (or, "time-of-flight") lidar, which has reached limits in terms of depth resolution. Coherent lidar schemes, such as frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) lidar, offer significant advantage in achieving high depth resolution, but are often too complex, too expensive, and/or too bulky to be implemented in the consumer industry. FMCW, and its close cousin, swept-source optical...

Wireless technology, which already plays a major part in our daily lives, is expected to further expand to networks of billions of autonomous sensors in coming years: the so-called Internet of Things. In one vision, sensors employing low-cost, low-power wireless motes collect and transmit data through a mesh network while operating only on scavenged or battery power. RF MEMS provides one approach to the stringent power and performance required by sensor networks.

This dissertation presents improvement to these MEMS technologies and introduces new approaches for wireless...