Wide Scan, Active K-Band, Direct-Integrated Phased Array for Efficient High-Power Tx-Generation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new wide-scan active directintegrated 1×5 phased array antenna (AIPAA) for mm-Wave applications. The AIPAA's unit-cell comprises three K-band miniaturized tapered slot elements, a GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) as a power amplifier (PA), a stability circuit, an input matching network, and biasing components. The tapered slot antenna element is reshaped so that its input impedance closely matches the optimal load impedance of the HEMT (Z opt =6+j38 Ω at 22 GHz), which enhances the system efficiency. The peak integrated PAs' Power-Added Efficiency (PAEp) is ≥ 56% with ≤ 9% variation over scan coverage (±50 • ) at 1.5dB power backoff from P1dB. The peak AIPAA system Power-Added Efficiency (PAEs) is 51% with a peak array radiation efficiency of 92%. The relative frequency bandwidth with PAEp above 25% is between 9%-13% over the scan range. The proposed AIPAA demonstrates less than 0.9dB and 1dB scanloss over the scan coverage in terms of antenna array gain and PAs' power gain (Gp), respectively. The peak PA-integrated array gain and EIRP at P1dB of 24dBi and 51dBm are achieved, respectively. The proposed AIPAA's size is 18 × 58 × 17 mm 3 with a cell of 9.2 × 6.5 × 1.8 mm 3 . The measurements are in good agreement with electromagnetic and circuit co-simulation results.

A Fully Integrated Filtering Vivaldi Antenna With High Selectivity and Wide Out-of-Band Suppression

“…In this situation, there are two major challenges: Firstly, when the antenna element is highly integrated with transceiver components, there is significantly less space left for filtering. Secondly, in the highly integrated active antenna, the standard 50 Ω interface impedance can not be applied in the case of high-efficiency requirement [2], [3].…”

“…base antenna bandwidth,2 LPF+lower aperture cutoff,3 open and short-circuit T.L. resonator, 4 passband (f l ,f h ) GHz, 5 complicated, 6 controllable, 7 not applicable, 8 filtering bandwidth, 9 narrow band (≈ 10%), 10 out-of-band gain suppression, 11 not reported, * filtering antenna I, gain are compared with simulation results and shown in Fig.10(b) and 10(c), respectively.…”