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This letter proposes a wideband active double-pole double-throw (DPDT) switch for wideband phased array antennas, which realizes multi-octave bandwidth with positive gain and 4-way switching operation using a bi-directional distributed amplifier technique. The measured gain is 2.0-6.0 dB and the input and output return losses are better than 9 dB from 2-22 GHz. The isolation is over 15 dB and the measured input P1dB is greater than −9.1 dBm and the output P1dB is greater than −7.8 dBm from 2-22 GHz. The chip size is 1.07 × 0.98 mm 2 , including pads. The switch consumes 10 mA from a 2.5 V supply. Almost identical RF performance is achieved in each of the 4-way switching operations due to a symmetric circuit topology and careful layout. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first demonstration of the active DPDT switch configuration.Index Terms-Active switch, beam forming, bi-directional amplifier, cascode, octave bandwidth, phased array antenna, SiGe, silicon-germanium, T/R chipset.

This paper presents a 5‐bit digital step attenuator (DSA) using a commercial 0.18‐μm silicon‐on‐insulator (SOI) process for the wideband phased array antenna. Both low insertion loss and low root mean square (RMS) phase error and amplitude error are achieved employing two attenuation topologies of the switched path attenuator and the switched T‐type attenuator. The attenuation coverage of 31 dB with a least significant bit of 1 dB is achieved at DC to 20 GHz. The RMS phase error and amplitude error are less than 2.5° and less than 0.5 dB, respectively. The measured insertion loss of the reference state is less than 5.5 dB at 10 GHz. The input return loss and output return loss are each less than 12 dB at DC to 20 GHz. The current consumption is nearly zero with a voltage supply of 1.8 V. The chip size is 0.93 mm×0.68 mm, including pads. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a low phase error DC‐to‐20‐GHz SOI DSA.