A Compact Broadband Microwave Phase Detector Based on MEMS Technology

Abstract

A compact broadband microwave phase detector based on the micro electromechanical systems technology is presented in this letter. Cascaded asymmetrical coplanar striplines are adopted to achieve broadband performance over the whole <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$X$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -band and the occupied size is reduced by 60% through capacitive loadings. The measured phase detection sensitivities are rather stable for different frequencies at <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$X$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -band and are larger than 16.6, 49.6, 74.9, 89.9, and 101.2 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{V}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> /° at 10, 50, 100, 150, and 200-mW input powers, respectively. These results double our previous works. The relative errors between the measurement and the theory are <9%. Response times are all below 2 ms with RF signal stimulus at different frequencies.