Broadband tunable beam steering with a broadband and linear phase shifter

Abstract

A broadband tunable phased array antenna system was fabricated using a broadband and linear phase shifter. For the frequency between 1.6 and 2.4 GHz, more than ±19° of beam steering was achieved with a 1 × 4 array. The main part of this system consists of a low loss, compact, linear tunable phase shifter which is implemented with left-handed transmission line theory. For the same frequency range, the phase shifter showed less than 5.1 dB insertion loss for the whole 360° phase variation with ±21° of phase deviation from a linear line for the control voltages. By combining this phase shifter with a broadband quasi-Yagi antenna, a broadband tunable phased array was fabricated. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1830–1832, 2014