Ka-band full-360° analog phase shifter with low insertion loss

Abstract

A new reflection-type wideband 360° monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit (MMIC) analog phase shifter at the Ka-band is proposed. The phase shifter is designed based on the principle of vector synthesis. Three Lange couplers are employed in the phase shifter, which is fabricated by the standard 0.25-μm GaAs process. We use four 4 × 40 μm GaAs HEMTs as the reflection loads. A microstrip line in parallel with the device is used as an inductance to counteract the parasitic capacitance of the device so that the reflection load performs like a pure resistance and the insertion loss can be decreased. In this phase shifter, a folded Lange coupler is utilized to reduce the size of the chip. The size of the proposed MMIC phase shifter is only 2.0 × 1.2 mm2. The measurement results show that the insertion loss is 5.0 ± 0.8 dB and a 360° continuously tunable range across 27–32 GHz is obtained with miniscule DC power consumption.