A compact 90–96 GHz 6‐bit passive vector modulator phase shifter in 28‐nm CMOS for phase array applications

Abstract

This letter presents a 90-96 GHz 6-bit digital control passive vector modulator phase shifter (PS) in a 28-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor for phase array application. In PS, a full differential directional coupler as a quadrature generator (QG) is proposed, which achieves wide bandwidth and a high-performance orthogonal network by introducing more pole-zero pairs. In the vector modulator, two 6-bit binary-weighted vector modulators, respectively scale the quadrature signal generated by QG to achieve a high-resolution vector phase. The measured PS cover ∘ 360 and the minimal root mean square (RMS) phase error is ∘ 0.7 and RMS gain error 0.3 dB at 93 GHz, respectively. The fabricated PS occupies 310 × 280 μm 2 excluding pads with no power consumption.