Soft-impacting micromechanical resoswitch zero-quiescent power AM receiver

A micromechanical resonant switch-based envelope detector employing a soft-impact cantilever output electrode to affect a linear input amplitude-to-output level gain has successfully received, filtered, amplified, and demodulated an input AM signal over a 63-kHz carrier, effectively demonstrating a zero-quiescent power AM receiver to complement a previous such FSK receiver. The RF front-end achieves a power gain of 30dB and demodulates without needing a power hungry local oscillator. Key to operation as an AM receiver is the linear analog amplification (as opposed to binary amplification in the work of Liu et al. (2015)) enabled by the flexible soft-impact output electrode. The higher Q of 1200 of the polysilicon device with Ru-silicide contact further increases the receiver sensitivity to -68dBm, which is 8dB better than that in the work of Liu et al. (2015). The ability of this device to AM demodulate while consuming zero power during standby periods makes it ideal for use in ultra-low power long-distance receiver applications, such as the clocks that wirelessly receive atomic clock time over thousands of miles via AM over a 60-kHz carrier.