Phase Shift Range Research Articles

An original determination of the maximum phase shift range obtained for an array of N coupled oscillators

This paper presents an original approach, using a harmonic balance optimization method, allowing to predict the maximum phase shift range that can be practically obtained for an array of N coupled oscillators. Indeed, unlike what is predicted by the theory, the proposed analysis allows to show that the maximum value of the phase shift decreases by increasing the number N of coupled oscillators in the array. Hence, this method allows to find an empirical limit of the phase shift obtained between two adjacent oscillators which tends to ± 180°/N. The results obtained with the proposed method are compared with the measurement results of an array made of two and four coupled voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) implemented in the QUBiC4X 0.25 µm BiCMOS SiGe:C process of NXP semiconductors. These measurement results confirmed that the maximum measured phase shift range is close to ± 180°/2 and ± 180°/4 for arrays made of two and four coupled VCOs respectively.

Double-Layer Ku/K Dual-Band Orthogonally Polarized High-Efficiency Transmitarray Antenna

This paper presents a double-layer, dual-band, orthogonally polarized, highly efficient transmitarray antenna (TA) operated in the Ku/K band (14 GHz/20 GHz) for millimeter wave (MMW) wireless communication systems (WCS). The proposed TA consists of two types of multi-resonant dipoles with metal vias, operating in the Ku and K bands. The Ku and K elements are interlaced with each other independently to ensure dual-band orthogonally polarized operation. The proposed double-layer elements obtained a 360° phase shift range with transmission amplitude greater than −2 dB. They also achieved independent phase responses in both bands by two orthogonally arranged elements. The proposed TA has been designed, manufactured and measured. The measurement results, which are consistent with simulation results, indicate that maximum gains of 25.2 and 27.4 dBi corresponding to aperture efficiencies of 55% and 49% are obtained at 13.75 and 20 GHz, respectively. Moreover, 1-dB gain bandwidths of 10% and 6% are also achieved in the Ku and K frequency bands, respectively. Therefore, the proposed double-layer Ku/K dual-band TA with high efficiency and simple design is a good candidate for MMW WCS.

Double-Layer 45° Linearly Polarized Wideband and Highly Efficient Transmitarray Antenna

This letter presents a double-layer 45° linearly polarized (LP) wideband and highly efficient transmitarray antenna (TA). The proposed element is composed of two multi-resonant dipoles and four metal vias. The dipoles are placed on the diagonal of the unit cell and printed on both sides of the dielectric substrate. The metal vias which penetrate the substrate and connect the upper and lower dipoles are used to improve the transmission efficiency and obtain the large phase shift range of the proposed element. The proposed element realizes a full 360° phase shift range with a smooth slope in the band, and the magnitude loss is less than 1.5 dB at 20 GHz. The proposed TA is designed, manufactured, and measured. The measurement and simulation results are consistent. Measurement results indicate that the proposed TA has a maximum gain of 26.9 dBi at 20 GHz and an aperture efficiency of 53.5% with a 1 dB gain bandwidth of 12% (18.8–21.2 GHz). The proposed double-layer 45° LP TA shows enhanced bandwidth and simple design. Using a double-layer structure opens possibilities for TA design.

Analysis and Design of a 35-GHz Hybrid π-Network High-Gain Phase Shifter With 360° Continuous Phase Shifting

This paper presents the analysis and design of a 35-GHz high-gain phase shifter with 360° continuous phase shifting. To enhance the phase shift range, a hybrid $\pi $ -network realized by combining the electrical tuning through capacitors and magnetic tuning through transformers is developed. The phase shift modules are inserted between the vertically stacking transistors to achieve the embedded phase shifting with the minimum loss. Furthermore, the Gm stages offer additional signal gain to suppress attenuation in the passive phase shifter. The capacitive neutralization technique is utilized to further increase the gain and enhance stability. This prototype, fabricated in a 28-nm CMOS process, demonstrates a 360° continuous phase shift with a maximum gain of 25.6 dB and a minimum noise figure of 4.1 dB. It consumes 26-mW power with a supply voltage of 0.9 V and 1.25 mm $\times0.75$ mm chip area.

Triangular Phase Shift Detector for Drone Precise Vertical Landing RF Systems

This article presents a circuit for the precise vertical landing of drones based on a three phase-shifts detection of a single frequency transmitted from the landing point. The circuit can be considered as a new navigation sensor that assists in guidance corrections for landing at a specific point. The circuit has three inputs to which the signal transmitted from an oscillator located at the landing point arrives with different delays. The input signals are combined in pairs in each of the three analog phase detectors, after having passed through 3 dB at 90° hybrid couplers that guarantee a theoretical nonambiguous phase shift range of ±90°. Each output has a voltage that is proportional to the phase shift between each of the input signals, which in turn depends on the position relative to the landing point. A simple landing algorithm based on phase shift values is proposed, which could be integrated into the same flight control platform, thus avoiding the need to add additional processing components. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed design, a triangular phase shift detector prototype has been implemented using commercial devices. Calibration and measurements at 2.46 GHz show a dynamic range of 30 dB and a nonambiguous detection range of ±80° in the worst cases. Those specs let us track the drone during the landing maneuver in an inverted cone formed by a surface with a ±4.19 m radius at 10 m high and the landing point.

Dynamic phase control with printing and fluidic materials' interaction by inkjet printing an RF sensor directly on a stereolithographic 3D printed microfluidic structure.

Stereolithographic (SL) three-dimensional (3D) printing of microfluidic channels and inkjet printing of radio frequency (RF) electronics are promising lab-on-a-chip technologies. However, the effective integration of the two techniques has been challenging since the fabricated parts need to be combined via an additional bonding process, such as plasma bonding. This study proposes combining RF electronics with SL printed microfluidic structures by directly inkjet printing onto a 3D printed mould. This allows the inkjet printing of RF electronics with high conductivity (8 × 106 S m-1) and high resolution (50 μm) as a surface modification of the 3D printed mould. This process combines the three-dimensional printing of microfluidic parts and the inkjet printing of RF sensors into a single process. The proposed approach increases the interaction between a printed RF part and a fluid material by adjusting the distance between them, and it can be applied to various resins and 3D printing methods. Furthermore, the proposed fabrication process was applied to a dynamic phase advanced and delayed transmission line (TL) operating at 3.8 GHz as a fluidic sensor. Consequently, using the same pattern, a higher phase shift range per microliter of 10° was obtained than the 1° for conventional phase shift TLs.

The Tunable Phase Shift of High-Speed PIN Photodetector and Modified Uni-Traveling Carrier Photodetector

We report the phase shift of two types of photodetectors for a variation of bias voltage and optical power. One type is PIN-PD and the other is a modified uni-traveling carrier photodetector (MUTC-PD). In PIN-PD, the phase change shows a photocurrent-dependent variation of about 15 degrees at 3 GHz. It exhibits good stability over a wide bandwidth as the bias voltage changes. By comparison, the phase shift of the MUTC-PD is more sensitive to the bias voltage and the photocurrent. The continuous tunable range of phase shift in MUTC-PD reaches 50 degrees at 10 GHz. It is demonstrated that the adjustable phase shift mainly results from the transit time and the impedance dynamic effects in response to the optical power and bias voltage.

A High-Efficiency Double-Layer Transmitarray Antenna Using Low-Loss Dual-Linearly Polarized Elements

A high-efficiency double-layer transmitarray (TA) operating at 14.25 GHz is proposed using low-loss dual-linearly polarized elements. Each element comprises only two layers of patches printed on a dielectric substrate and four vias. Cross dipoles and spiral dipoles with four L-shaped patches are used as the first and second unit cells, respectively. L-shaped patches are employed to increase the transmission magnitude. The phase shift range is 360° for a transmission magnitude of −1 dB. A square TA composed of 400 elements is designed, manufactured, and tested to verify the design. The simulated results are consistent with the experimental results. The experimental results show that the TA has a gain of 29.18 dBi at 14.25 GHz, an aperture efficiency of 60.3%, and a 1 dB gain bandwidth of 6.8%.

A Novel Electronically Controlled Two-Dimensional Terahertz Beam-Scanning Reflectarray Antenna Based on Liquid Crystals

This study investigated a novel electronically controlled two-dimensional beam-scanning reflective array antenna (reflectarray), which uses nematic liquid crystals. A double-dipole resonance structure is used as the phase-shift unit for the reflectarray for the required phase compensation. The simulation shows that, for about 7 GHz bandwidth of the phase shift range, over 360° can be achieved at the F-band. In addition, a novel wiring scheme is proposed to reduce the adverse effect of the biasing line on the phase-shift performance and simplify the manufacturing process. A simulation of the designed 39 × 39 reflectarray shows that the maximum beam steering range, maximum gain, and side-lobe level at 115 GHz are 20°, 16.55 dBi, and -8.4 dB, respectively.

29‐/35 GHz Dual‐band high‐gain phase shifter with hybrid π‐networks

This Letter presents a 29-/35 GHz dual-band high-gain hybrid π-network-based phase shifter. The hybrid π-network realised by combining electrical tuning through capacitors and magnetic tuning through transformers extends the phase shift range. Furthermore, the phase shift modules are inserted between the vertically stacking transistors to realise the embedded phase shifting with the minimum loss. The Gm-stages offer the additional signal gain to offset attenuation from the passive phase shifter. This prototype, fabricated in a 28 nm CMOS process, demonstrates a 360° continuous phase shift range with a maximum gain of 22 dB at 35 GHz, and 240° continuous phase shift range with a maximum gain of 20 dB at 29 GHz. It consumes 26 mW power and 1.25 mm × 0.75 mm chip area.

Thermally Actuated SOI RF MEMS-Based Fully Integrated Passive Reflective-Type Analog Phase Shifter for mmWave Applications

This article presents a monolithically integrated reflective-type phase shifter (RTPS) utilizing silicon-on-insulator (SOI) radio frequency (RF) microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The analog phase shifter employs a hybrid coupler and two identical reflective loads optimized to achieve a large phase shift range. The hybrid coupler is designed using two CPW-based couplers connected in a folded tandem configuration to achieve a compact size design. Various reflective load topologies are studied for optimum phase shift range and phase linearity over the bandwidth of interest. Measurement results demonstrate a continuous 120° tunable range from 26 to 30 GHz. The mmWave phase shifter exhibits a low insertion loss of 5.35 dB ± 0.6 dB at 28 GHz. The fabricated phase shifter has an overall device footprint of 4.0 mm × 2.6 mm. All the components of the phase shifter module are co-fabricated in the 20 μm device layer of a SOI wafer, which provides the flexibility of monolithic integration with other RF modules in phased array antenna systems. Contactless thermally actuated MEMS varactors are used in the reflective loads which do not suffer from the conventional contact-based reliability issues.

A Ku-Band GaAs Multifunction Transmitter and Receiver Chipset

This paper presents a Ku-band monolithic multifunction transmitter and receiver chipset fabricated in 0.25-μm GaAs pseudomorphic high-electron mobility transistor technology. The chipset achieves a high level of integration, including a 4-bit 360° digital phase shifter, 5-bit 15.5-dB digital attenuator, amplifier and 9-bit digital serial-to-parallel converter for digital circuit control. Since the multifunction chipset includes a medium power amplifier and a low-noise amplifier, it features high P1dB and low noise figures over the full Ku-band frequencies. The multifunction transmitter shows a peak gain of 16.5 dB with output P1dB of 19.2 dBm at 15 GHz. The multifunction receiver shows a peak gain of 17.3 dB with noise figure of 2.5 dB at 15 GHz. The attenuation range is 15.5 dB with a step of 0.5 dB and the phase shift range is 360° with a step of 22.5°. Each chip area of the transmitter and receiver is 4.2 × 2.8 mm2.

A High-Performance Transmitarray Antenna with Thin Metasurface for 5G Communication Based on PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization).

A 5G metasurface (MS) transmitarray (TA) feed by compact-antenna array with the performance of high gain and side-lobe level (SLL) reduction is presented. The proposed MS has two identical metallic layers etched on both sides of the dielectric substrate and four fixed vias connecting two metallic layers that works at 28 GHz to increase the transmission phase shift range. The proposed planar TA consisting of unit cells with different dimensional information can simulate the function as an optical lens according to the Fermat’s principle, so the quasi-spherical wave emitted by the compact Potter horn antenna at the virtual focal point will transform to the quasi-plane wave by the phase-adjustments. Then, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) is introduced to optimize the phase distribution on the TA to decrease the SLL further. It is found that the optimized TA could achieve 27 dB gain at 28 GHz, 11.8% 3 dB gain bandwidth, −30 dB SLL, and aperture efficiency of 23% at the operating bandwidth of 27.5–29.5 GHz, which performs better than the nonoptimized one. The advanced particularities of this optimized TA including low cost, low profile, and easy to configure make it great potential in paving the way to 5G communication and radar system.

A Low-Profile Quad-Beam Transmitarray

In this letter, a novel method is proposed to design a low-profile multibeam transmitarray. Instead of a conventional horn feed, a slot array (SA) feed is used to illuminate uniformly same size transmitarray aperture (TA) in near field with a plane wave excitation, and TA is designed to transform plane wave to high gain multibeam pattern. The separation between SA feed and TA is independent of aperture size, so a very small separation is selected to achieve a low-profile transmitarray. A quad layer 3-dipole unit cell with 360° phase shift range is used as a transmitarray element. A modified intersection approach is used to optimize distribution of transmitarray elements on aperture to synthesize multibeam pattern. Finally, a prototype of Ku-band quad-beam transmitarray antennais fabricated and tested. The designed transmitarray shows good quad-beam performance with reduced profile and good match has been observed between simulated and measured results.

Sub-3 Å Apoferritin Structure Determined with Single Position of Volta Phase Plate and Full Range of Phase Shift

Sub-3 Å Apoferritin Structure Determined with Single Position of Volta Phase Plate and Full Range of Phase Shift

Continuously tunable 360° phase shifter based on planar waveguide technology for MM‐wave applications

A continuously tunable phase shifter based on a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) is proposed for high-performance applications at millimetre-wave frequencies. The proposed phase shifter consists of two slots cut on the SIW's broad wall and a high dielectric constant (HDC) slab over the slots. The phase shifting mechanism is based on perturbing the electric field of the SIW-slot by putting a HDC slab over two slots. The fabricated phase shifter exhibits linear phase-frequency response behaviour with an average insertion loss less than 2 dB over a phase shift range of in the operating frequency band (29–31 GHz).

Simple ladder‐like single‐layer balanced wideband phase shifter with wide phase shift range and appropriate common‐mode suppression

In this study, a single-layer balanced wideband phase shifter with a wide phase shift range of 45°–315° and acceptable common-mode (CM) suppression is proposed. The main branch has a simple ladder-like structure and the reference branch utilises a coupling structure. The main branch electrical length is constant for any desired differential-mode (DM) phase shift. Assuming a specific return loss (e.g. 16, 20, and 25 dB), the phase shifter is carefully analysed and a design procedure is given leading to an ultra-low phase error design. Then by making a trade-off between the CM and DM bandwidths at the cost of higher phase error, more design solutions for the phase shifter are given. To validate both the proposed structure as well as its design procedure, a balanced wideband phase shifter with the DM phase shift of 180°±4.2° (1.851–4.017 GHz) and the CM suppression of better than 15 dB (1.81–4 GHz) is fabricated, resulting in 73.82 and 75.25% fractional bandwidth, respectively. The fabricated balanced phase shifter has a return loss of and insertion loss of . The synthesised, simulated, and measured results are in good agreement with each other.

Phase-shift laser range finder technique based on optical carrier phase modulation.

A coherent laser range finder based on optical phase modulation and phase shift measurement is presented. In the proposed laser range finder, the emitted laser is modulated by an electro-optic phase modulator using a 20 MHz sine signal, and the received laser is mixed with a local oscillator using a 90° optical hybrid. Compared with traditional laser phase shift range finders, the proposed laser range finder can measure the velocity and range at high precision simultaneously. An algorithm to calculate the range and velocity is deduced. Our preliminary experiments on moving targets indicate that when the measurement rate is 100 kHz, the root mean square errors of range and velocity, respectively, are 9.35×10-4m and 4.74×10-4m/s.

Control of Phase Shift in Two-Rotor Vibration Units

This brief is devoted to the experimental study of possibilities for control of the phase shift between two vibration actuators. The control laws for frequency stabilization simultaneously with the prescribed phase shift between the rotors angular positions are proposed and experimentally studied by means of the mechatronic vibration test bed. It is obtained that for the low and medium frequencies, the self-synchronization of unbalanced rotors does not prevent achieving the desired phase shift between the rotors. For a high-frequency band, the Huygens self-synchronization of rotors manifests itself, narrowing the range of the achievable phase shift. The obtained experimental results are in agreement with the simulation results obtained from the 7-DOF mathematical model. Especially important is an agreement in the vibrational field observed from simulation and experiment. The qualitative coincidence of such complex motions means both the validation of the model and the verification of the measurement and experiment methodology.

Tunable Substrate Integrated Waveguide Phase Shifter Using High Dielectric Constant Slab

This letter presents a low-cost, low-profile, and high-performance $Ka$ -band continuously tunable substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) phase shifter. The proposed phase shifter consists of a slot cut on the SIW’s broad wall and a high dielectric constant slab over the slot. The phase-shifting mechanism is based on perturbing the electric field of the SIW’s fundamental mode, TE10-like, by putting a high dielectric constant slab over the slot of SIW structure to create slow wave phenomena. A prototype is designed, fabricated, and measured. The fabricated phase shifter exhibits linear phase–frequency response behavior with an average insertion loss less than 1.5 dB with an insertion loss variation less than 0.5 dB over a phase shift range of 275° in the operating frequency band (29–31 GHz). The phase shifter consumes a maximum of 25-mW power.