Search

This article presents a 15–55-GHz multiband dual-beam receive phased-array to cover the fifth-generation (5G) new radio (NR) frequency range 2 (FR2) bands. The phased array is based on an eight-channel ( $4 \times $ ) dual-beam receive beamformer chip which is designed in a SiGe BiCMOS process. The chip adopts RF beamforming with differential RF inputs to interface with wideband differential Vivaldi antennas. Each channel pair consists of a low noise amplifier (LNA) that splits the power between two channels each with a phase shifter (PS), a variable gain amplifier (VGA), and a differential-to-single-ended stage (D2S). Two 4:1 Wilkinson (WK) combining networks are used to combine the outputs of the eight channels into two independent RF outputs. The beamformer chip results in an electronic gain of 24–30 dB with 2.9–4.2-dB noise figure (NF) and $- 31~\pm ~3$ dBm input power 1-dB compression point (IP1dB) at 15–50 GHz and consumes 185 mW/channel. A 16-element phased array module is built on a printed circuit board (PCB) using beamformer chips and scans up to ±60° with side lobes below -11 dB across multiple 5G FR2 bands. A wireless link is demonstrated with 12-Gb/s data rates using 64-QAM single carrier signals and <2.62% error vector magnitude (EVM) with 400-MHz orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) 5G NR signals. To the authors’ knowledge, this work achieves the lowest noise figure among wideband designs covering the 5G FR2 spectrum.

This article presents a 23–46-GHz, $8 \times 8$ single-polarized wideband bow-tie phased array designed to support multistandard fifth-generation (5G) communications. The array is built by integrating SiGe BiCMOS Tx/Rx beamformer chips with stacked differential bow-tie antennas on a single printed circuit board (PCB). The array is capable of ±55° and ±35° scanning in the azimuth plane and the elevation plane and achieves an effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of 42–48 dBm at P1 dB at 23–46 GHz. In the Rx mode, the array yields a peak G/T of −10 and −14 dB/K from 23 to 46 GHz. Measurements on 16/64/256-QAM modulated waveforms show <5% EVM and 42–45-dBm average EIRP with a peak data rate of 3.2 Gb/s. The array also transmits 5G OFDM 400-MHz waveforms with a PAPR of 11 dB at an EIRP of 40–44 dBm and 3.5% EVM, making it ideal for use as small base stations. To the authors’ knowledge, this work achieves the widest bandwidth among the reported planar phased arrays with application areas to multistandard 5G systems.

In this article, we propose a novel method for thinning phased arrays with circular apertures, utilizing a spiral configuration of elements. A comparative study is presented between two types of thinned planar arrays—spiral and conventional diffused thinned arrays. The performance of these arrays is verified using four different filled fractions, occupying 64%, 50%, 32%, and 25% of the element count of an 812-element circular aperture. The measurements were conducted primarily at 29 GHz using a $Ka$ -band satellite communication (SATCOM) transmit phased array. The results demonstrate that both types of arrays exhibit wide scan angles of up to ±60° while keeping the sidelobe levels (SLLs) below −12.5 dB. Specifically, spiral arrays are capable of achieving near-diffraction-limited patterns at wide scan angles. Additionally, both arrays exhibit a similar frequency response to the reference aperture, thus maintaining the operation bandwidth. Application areas are in low-earth orbit (LEO) SATCOM phased arrays or mm-wave imaging systems with a reduced number of elements with diffraction-limited beams and where higher SLLs may be tolerated.

This article presents a 140-GHz 2-D scalable wafer-scale transmit-receive (TRX) phased array based on radio frequency (RF) beamforming with 4-bit for both phase and gain controls. The chip is composed of $8\times 8$ RF channels each having transmit and receive circuits, in addition to a TRX single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switch. One of the elements is replaced with an up/down-converter (UDC) channel composed of mixers, a $\times 6$ LO multiplier chain, and intermediate frequency (IF) amplifiers at 9–14 GHz. The on-chip UDC channel is the interface between the IF signals on a printed circuit board (PCB) and the TX/RX RF distribution networks (DNs) on a chip. The 140-GHz DN is composed of coplanar waveguide (CPW) lines, Wilkinson dividers/combiners, and line amplifiers (LAs) to provide signal amplification. The chip occupies an area of $9.84\times 8.27\,\,\text {mm}^{2}$ and is designed and fabricated in GlobalFoundries, Malta, NY, USA, CMOS 45RFSOI technology. The chip is flipped on a low-cost organic RF PCB containing $8\times 8$ patch antenna array placed at $1.07\times 1$ . $22 \text {mm}^{2}$ grid ( $0.5\lambda \times 0.57\lambda $ at 140 GHz). The array electronically scans up to ±60° in the $H$ -plane and ±38° in the $E$ -plane for both TX and RX operations. Over-the-air (OTA) measured performance of the array demonstrates TX peak effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of 34-37.5 dBm at 137.5-145 GHz and RX input 1-dB compression point (P1dB) of −12 to −9 dBm at 134–143 GHz. Communication link measured for both TX and RX operations supports modulated 16-/64- quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals with up to 24 Gb/s data rates with an rms EVM less than 7%/6%. In addition, a TRX phased array wireless links at 1.45 m and 5.2 meters are demonstrated with data rates up to 20 and 16 Gb/s using 16-QAM modulated signal and an rms EVM less than 9% for the 1.45 m link. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this article presents the highest reported EIRP of 37.5 dBm for wafer-scale arrays in silicon technologies.

This article presents a 3.1–25.5-GHz phased-array receive beamformer integrated circuit (BFIC) for $C$ -, $X$ -, $Ku$ -, and $Ka$ -band satellite communication (SATCOM) in a 90-nm SiGe BiCMOS process. The chip adopts the radio frequency (RF) beamforming architecture and consists of 16 channels for dual-beam operation. The measured electronic gain of each channel is 26.6 dB with a 3.1–25.5-GHz 3-dB bandwidth, 25-dB gain control, and 5-bit phase resolution. The measured noise figure (NF) is <2.0 dB at the $C$ -, $X$ -, and $Ku$ -bands and <2.4 dB at the $Ka$ -band. A 16-element wideband phased array using Vivaldi antennas is designed. The array achieves ±60° scanning, and the broadside gain-to-noise-temperature (G/T) is between −14.6 and −12.0 dB. QPSK, 8-PSK, and 16-QAM modulated signals (up to 400 MBaud) are supported with <3% error-vector magnitudes (EVMs) at all scan angles. To the authors’ knowledge, the BFIC demonstrates the widest operating bandwidth for SATCOM ground-terminal reception with a state-of-the-art NF.

This article presents a wideband mm-wave passive harmonic rejection mixer (HRM) operating at 8 to 30 GHz. Resistive scaling is used to maintain high mixer linearity while rejecting the third and fifth harmonic foldings. The clock generation circuit employs a passive two-stage polyphase filter (PPF) followed by a phase interpolator capacitor divider circuit to generate the eight-phases, which eliminates clock dividers and results in efficient operation up to 30 GHz. Furthermore, the clocks are designed with overlapping 50% duty cycle, and mixer cell-to-cell isolation is achieved using a Wilkinson network in the radio frequency (RF) path. This novel design results in mm-wave operation with wide instantaneous bandwidth and greatly reduced LO power consumption. The HRM is fabricated in Global Foundries 45RFSOI CMOS process and has a measured conversion loss of −12.5 to −15.5 dB at 8–30 GHz with an instantaneous IF bandwidth of up to 8 GHz. A harmonic rejection ratio (HRR) of 27–45 dB is measured across the entire bandwidth for the second, third and fifth harmonics. The measured input P1dB and IP3 are 4.2–7 and 14.2–16.2 dBm, respectively, at 8–30 GHz. The harmonic rejection is further seen in the mixer spur table, with measured spurs of −70, −70, −60 dBm for the (2, 2), (2, 3) and (3, 3) spur for an LO frequency of 10 GHz, IF of 0.5 GHz and input signal power of 0 dBm. The total power consumption of the mixer is 200–390 mW at 8–30 GHz. This mixer is suitable for high linearity mm-wave 5G systems and wideband receivers and can be easily scaled to 20–50 GHz with similar low power consumption.

This article presents a novel approach for radars with a greatly reduced number of elements while still keeping narrow beamwidths and low sidelobe levels. The design is based on thinned transmit (TX) and receive (RX) arrays, each one randomized in an orthogonal fashion, such that the high sidelobes in one pattern (TX or RX) are greatly reduced by nulls in the other pattern (RX or TX). The goal is to build communication arrays and radars with narrow beamwidths but with one-half or one-quarter of the elements in the TX and RX arrays. This approach lowers the cost of large-aperture systems typically requiring hundreds or thousands of elements, while still keeping a high degree of fidelity in the patterns (beamwidth, sidelobes, and scan volume). The thinned-array impact on the TX effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP), RX gain, and 16- and 64-QAM error vector magnitude (EVM) versus radiated power are also considered in this article. These concepts can be applied to 24- and 77-GHz automotive radars for collision avoidance and imaging systems, and in $X$ -, $Ku$ -, and $Ka$ -band air-to-air due-regard radars, landing systems, and other applications.