A 25 GHz CMOS phased array receiver front-end based on subsector beam steering technique

A 25-GHz CMOS phased array receiver front-end with full-range beam steering is presented. The entire beam steering range is divided into five subsectors, where in each subsector the receive beam is steered by vector distribution and weighted vector combination of the received signals from array antennas. Such architecture has lower circuit complexity and less power consumption because no complicated full-range variable phase shifters and multiphase voltage-controlled oscillators, challenging in CMOS technology, are required. The implemented 0 13 μm CMOS phased array MMIC consumes lower than 30 mW and takes only a small area of 1.43 mm2. The measured array factors at various incident angles are demonstrated. It has 10–12 dB measured power gain and 9–10.5 dB noise figure in 24.5–26 GHz.