Electronically Controllable Phase Shifter with Progressive Impedance Transformation at K Band

Mohamed T Elkhorassani,Angel Palomares-Caballero,Pablo Escobedo,Antonio Alex-Amor,Juan F Valenzuela-Valdés,Cleofás Segura-Gómez,Pablo Padilla

doi:10.3390/app9235229

Mohamed T Elkhorassani, Angel Palomares-Caballero + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/app9235229

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Abstract

This communication presents the design of a two-port electronically tunable phase shifter at K band. The phase shifter consists of a 3 dB hybrid coupler loaded with reflective phase-controllable circuits. The reflective circuits are formed by varactors and non-sequential impedance transformers which increase the operational bandwidth and the provided phase shift. The final phase shifter design is formed by two loaded-coupler stages of phase shifting to guarantee a complete phase turn. An 18 GHz phase shifter design with dynamic range of 600 degrees of phase shift is depicted in this document. The prototype is manufactured and validated through measurements showing good agreement with the simulation results.

Highlights

Antenna arrays have been one of the most used structural strategies for the design of directive antennas in microwave ranges with demanding radiation requirements [1]
In this paper we present a K band electronically tunable phase shifter based on reflective circuits with progressive impedance transformers and varactors
The design is based on the use of loaded 3 dB/90◦ couplers

Summary

Introduction

Antenna arrays have been one of the most used structural strategies for the design of directive antennas in microwave ranges with demanding radiation requirements [1]. Planar substrate-based antennas have been present in many phased array designs due to the low manufacturing costs, easy integration, and low weight and profile [2,3] This is of interest in array structures such as reflectarrays and transmitarrays. The phase shifting strategy for both reflectarray- and transmitarray-based antennas depends on the system architecture and is typically obtained by a phase-delay circuit at each radiating cell of the array [7,8]. This phase shift can be fixed in design, yielding a passive device, or tunable, yielding an active antenna.

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