A variable gain CMOS phase shifter for phased array antenna applications

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis letter presents for the first time the development of a variable gain CMOS phase shifter using 0.18 µm CMOS process in the S‐band frequencies to be integrated with conformal phased array beamforming antenna for smart communication radar applications. The vector modulator based phase shifter has an integrated variable gain amplifier codesigned with the phase shifter circuitry in order to be capable of controlling both phase and gain simultaneously which is necessary to recover the degraded radiation pattern due to the conformal shaping of the phased array antenna. The phase shifter achieves measured continuous phase shift of 303° along with measured 7 dB gain control range over 2–2.60 GHz and an insertion loss of 7.12 dB at 2.2 GHz. The measured DC power consumption of the phase shifter is 34.2 mW from a 2 V supply with a smaller chip area of 1.12 mm2 including all pads. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 59:324–328, 2017