High-Efficiency Circularly Polarized Phased Array Based on 5 μm-Thick Nematic Liquid Crystals: Design, Over-The-Air Calibration, and Experimental Validation

This paper presents a systematic investigation and demonstration of a K-band circularly polarized liquid-crystal-based phased array (LCPA), including the design, over-the-air (OTA) in-array calibration, and experimental validation. The LCPA contains 16 phase-shifting radiating channels, each consisting of a circularly polarized stacked patch antenna and a liquid-crystal-based phase shifter (LCPS) based on a loaded differential line structure. Thanks to its slow-wave properties, the LCPS exhibits a maximum phase-shifting range of more than 360° with a figure of merit of 78.3(° )·dB−1 based on a liquid crystal layer with a thickness of only 5 μm. Furthermore, an automatic OTA calibration based on a state ergodic method is proposed, which enables the extraction of the phase–voltage curve of every individual LCPA channel. The proposed LCPA is manufactured and characterized with a total profile of only 1.76 mm, experimentally demonstrating a scanned circularly polarized beam from −40° to +40° with a measured peak gain of 12.5 dBic and a scanning loss of less than 2.5 dB. The bandwidth of the LCPA, which satisfies the requirements of port reflection (|S11|) < −15 dB, an axial ratio (AR) < 3 dB, beam squinting < 3°, and a gain variation < 2.2 dB, spans from 25.5 to 26.0 GHz. The total efficiency is about 34%, which represents a new state of the art. The use of the demonstrated low-profile LCPA to support circularly polarized scanning beams, along with the systematic design and calibration methodology, holds potential promise for a variety of millimeter-wave applications.