Tunable Filtering Devices in Satellite Payloads: A Review of Recent Advanced Fabrication Technologies and Designs of Tunable Cavity Filters and Multiplexers Using Mechanical Actuation

In the past decade, research teams around the world have demonstrated an impressive variety of techniques to create high-Q reconfigurable filters. However, most of the presented solutions have important li mitations in terms of bandwidth, for example, and combining reconfigurable filters inside a multiplexing device has been demonstrated as a very challenging task. Experimental validations of tumuxes are currently very rare. The perfection of this technology will be a major milestone in enabling a truly reconfigurable satellite payload. In parallel, important advances have been obtained using several additive-manufacturing techniques during the same period, and those techniques present several advantages that, we believe, may involve key solutions to solve some of the issues encountered.