A Bidirectional MEMS-Like Passive Beamformer for Emerging Millimeter-Wave Applications

Abstract

In this article, the design and implementation of a low-loss bidirectional microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-like passive beamformer for emerging millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) applications are illustrated. A 4 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 4 phased-array antenna (PAA) is fabricated employing the proposed beamformer for demonstration. The phase shifter (PS) embedded in the beamformer operates based on the principle of loaded-transmission line (TL) PSs. Slow wave mechanism is employed to shrink the size of the PS. The PS measurement results show the average insertion loss (IL) of 1.3 dB in all the tuning states and the IL variation is 0.9 dB. The PS provides 380° of the phase tuning range in a compact footprint area of 2.4 mm <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 3 mm. The antenna array incorporates slot-coupled patch antennas with left-handed circularly polarized (LHCP) radiation. The operating frequency bandwidth of the antenna system ranges from 28 to 30 GHz to provide co-pol/X-pol discrimination of more than 12 dB for all the steering angles. Measurement results show the beam steering angular range of ± 30° in both elevation and azimuth planes. The measurement results also show the peak directivity of 18.48 dBic and the radiation efficiency of 58% at boresight at the frequency of 29 GHz. The efficiency drops 16% when the steering angle reaches the maximum.