Voltage controlled ferroelectric lens phased arrays

Abstract

Abstract-A new concept for phased arrays is proposed using a voltage-controlled ferroelectric lens. The ferroelectric lens concept uniquely incorporates bulk phase shifting-the array does not contain individual phase shifters-using ferroelectric material. This will reduce the number of phase shifters from (n2m) to (n+m), where n is the number of columns and m is the number of rows in a phased array. The number of phase shifter drivers and phase shifter controls is also significantly reduced by using row-column beam steering. Thus, the ferroelectric lens concept can potentially lead to low-cost phased arrays. This paper presents the ferroelectric lens concept, theoretical analysis and design, and experimental results. The results indicate that the ferroelectric lens concept is viable and sound. Various phasedarray configurations using ferroelectric lens are included. A brief discussion on ferroelectric materials is included along with information on a U.S. Department of Defense program to improve ferroelectric materials.Index Terms-Bulk phase shifting, ferroelectric materials/devices, lens antennas, phased arrays.

Effect of Pb substitution on the microstructure and ferroelectric properties of Ba0.7Sr0.3TiO3 ceramic

“…Recently ABO 3 type ferroelectric (Ba,Sr)TiO 3 (BST) has attracted much attention for use in tunable devices such as microwave tunable phase shifters, filters, oscillators, and antennas due to their high dielectric constant, relatively low dielectric loss tangent, and large electric field induced tunability (change in dielectric constant) [1][2][3][4][5][6] . Besides, the BST material is also of high interest for devices like field effect transistors (FETs) due to their potential application in microelectronics, and especially for nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memory (NvFeRAM) because of its reasonably ferroelectric properties and the possibility of integration with silicon [7,8] .…”

A low-cost 8 to 26.5 GHz phased array antenna using a piezoelectric transducer controlled phase shifter

“…The dielectric perturbation changes the propagation constant and phase [7]. The new method will reduce the number of phase shifters from ( ) to ( ) where is the number of columns and is the number of rows in a two-dimensional (2-D) planar phased array [8]. Manuscript Beam steering methods using a ferrite plate have been developed for a low cost system, but it requires very high voltage up to several kV [5], [8], [9].…”

“…The new method will reduce the number of phase shifters from ( ) to ( ) where is the number of columns and is the number of rows in a two-dimensional (2-D) planar phased array [8]. Manuscript Beam steering methods using a ferrite plate have been developed for a low cost system, but it requires very high voltage up to several kV [5], [8], [9]. The ferrite plate phase shifter of [8] requires impedance matching transformers, a polarization rotator for 2-D array, large size lens, power consumption of 0.5 W, forced air cooling, etc.…”

“…Manuscript Beam steering methods using a ferrite plate have been developed for a low cost system, but it requires very high voltage up to several kV [5], [8], [9]. The ferrite plate phase shifter of [8] requires impedance matching transformers, a polarization rotator for 2-D array, large size lens, power consumption of 0.5 W, forced air cooling, etc. The new PET controlled multiline phase shifter does not require any impedance matching circuits and it has a smaller size; lower power consumption of less than 1 mW, lower dc control voltage of 60 V, and wider operating bandwidth due to a true time-delay type of phase shifting.…”

Phase Shifting with Coplanar Transmission Line Integrated Electrostatic Peristaltic Micropumps

“…In order to achieve low profile and reduce the cost of a phase-shifter in the phased array, new techniques need to be developed for analogue phaseshifters in phased arrays. Recently, several new phaseshifting techniques have been demonstrated, which attempt to address the above issues [1,2]. The techniques discussed in [1] rely on piezoelectrically-actuated mechanical systems to achieve phase-shifting.…”