K/Ka-Band Hybrid-Packaged Four-Element Four-Beam Phased-Array Transmitter and Receiver Front-Ends With Optimized Beamforming Passive Networks

作者：Meng Yang, Dixian Zhao, Chenyu Xu, Peng Gu, Yongran Yi, Mohan Guo, Xiangxi Yan, Liangliang Liu, Y. Chai, Huiqi Liu, X. You · 发表于：IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1109/JSSC.2024.3391893 · 被引用次数：36 · 研究领域：Computer Science

This article presents K/Ka-band four-element four-beam phased-array transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) front-ends. Hybrid-packaged technology is employed, consisting of one TX/RX 65-nm CMOS beamformer and four 0.1- $\mu \text{m}$ GaAs power amplifiers (PAs)/low-noise amplifiers (LNAs). Each beam maintains a full connection to every antenna element without degrading array gain. A compact and symmetrical layout floor-plan is proposed to reduce signal routing complexity. Signal distribution and combination are performed through two optimized tree-type and rectangular-shaped beamforming networks to improve the beam-to-beam consistency and isolation. The TX/RX CMOS beamformer provides an energy-efficient solution by adopting low-power phase/amplitude controls. The second harmonic trap is co-optimized with the transformer-based matching to enhance linearity in the TX. A new L-type inductor-enhanced matching network is devised in the RX to broaden bandwidth. In addition, the digital circuit introduces a voting mechanism to improve fault tolerance. Utilizing fan-out wafer-level chip-scale packaging, both hybrid-packaged TX and RX front-ends occupy an area of 50 mm2. The proposed TX demonstrates a measured small-signal gain of 23.5–26.5 dB across 17.7–20.2 GHz. The output 1-dB compression point ( $P_{\text {1dB}}$ ) and the maximal power-added efficiency (PAEMAX) reach 21.2–23.2 dBm and 26%–30%, respectively. The proposed RX achieves a measured average gain of 24 dB across 27.5–30 GHz...