A Ka-Band 64-Element 4-Beam Polarization-Reconfigurable Phased Array Based on 65-nm CMOS Tx RFICs for SATCOM

This paper presents a 27.5–31.5 GHz single-aperture-integrated low-profile 64-element 4-beam phased array, which incorporates 16 Ka-band 8-element 4-beam transmitter front-end ICs in 65-nm CMOS. An 18-layer hybrid laminated printed circuit board is utilized to enable a high-density design. A slot-fed dual-polarized patch antenna array with decoupling structures is designed to enable polarization (Pol) diversity within a simple geometry. Four sets of onboard 1:16 Wilkinson power dividing networks are realized for high-isolation multi-beam forming. Moreover, cross-Pol cancellation can be achieved by using auxiliary beams. Simulation and measurement results show that the proposed multibeam array can generate four independent beams scanning up to ±60° in the elevation plane. Larger than 50-dBm EIRP at Psat across the frequency band is demonstrated and 4 such array can be assembled into a 256-element multibeam system for better scanning and EIRP performance.