A Temperature-Compensated Ku-Band Four-Beam Phased-Array Receiver With Low Attenuation and Relative Phase Variations

Abstract

This brief proposes a temperature-compensated Ku-band eight-element four-beam phased-array receiver with low attenuation and relative phase variations. By properly adjusting the gate voltage of the switch MOSFETs in the 6-bit step attenuator, the resistance of MOSFETs can remain constant with temperature variation. Furthermore, the attenuation and relative phase errors caused by ambient temperature variations can be effectively decreased to meet the requirements of phased-array systems. To verify the proposed method, an eight-element 10.7–12.7 GHz phased-array receiver is designed and fabricated using a 130-nm silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS process. With the help of minimized attenuation and phase variations, the phased-array receiver exhibits a root-mean-square (RMS) attenuation error less than 0.71 dB and a RMS relative phase error less than 2.7° from −40°C to 85°C at 10.7-12.7 GHz. Meanwhile, the measured noise figure (NF) and single-channel gain are 1.1-2.5 dB and 21.2-27.8 dB, respectively.