Ka-Band Inductor-Shared SP${n}$ T DP${n}$ T Switches and Their Applications to TTD Phase Shifter

Abstract

This paper describes Ka-band inductor-shared RF switches and their applications to a 35.2-ps 6-bit true-time-delay (TTD) switched-line (SL) phase shifter (PS). The inductor-shared RF switches share an inductor to match the input and output (I/O) ports of different states, which are realized with a switched inductor for SP ${n}\text{T}$ case and with a shared matching network for DP ${n}\text{T}$ case. The switches are applied to controlling most significant 3 bits of the proposed TTD SL PS. The delay lines and reference lines of the PS are implemented with microstrip lines and inverted microstrip lines in the same space, respectively. The dual-side microstrip lines allow it to have not only a small size but also compensation of the loss difference between the signal lines with different lengths. The least significant 3 bits are implemented with the modified structure of the SL PS, which reduces the size further by replacing a reference line by a series switch. The test chip is fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process. It operates in the range of 20–30 GHz occupying a 0.18 mm2 core size. Its measured insertion loss and IP1dB are 11 dB and 6.5 dBm at 28 GHz, respectively. The measured gain error and rms delay error are less than 2 dB and 0.7 ps at operation frequencies.