Dynamic Polarization Control

Abstract

Dynamic polarization control (DPC) is the method of setting the polarization of the far-field electric field generated by a radiating antenna entirely electronically in order to maintain polarization matching with the receiving antenna regardless of its polarization or orientation in space. This work implements a fully integrated 2 × 1 phased array radiator in 32 nm CMOS SOI at 105.5 GHz with DPC. The system consists of a central locking oscillator that phase locks oscillators within the core of each antenna followed by three amplification stages with variable gain that drive the antennas. By controlling the amplitude and phase of two orthogonal polarized subparts of each multi-port antenna, various far-field polarizations can be realized. The array is capable of beam steering, controlling the polarization angle across the entire tuning range of 0° to 180° while maintaining axial ratios above 10 dB, and controlling the axial ratio from 2.4 dB (near circular) to 14 dB (linear) in various directions of radiation. It radiates a maximum EIRP of 7.8 dBm with a total radiated power of 0.9 mW. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this work presents the first integrated radiator with dynamically controllable polarization.