A Quad-Band RX Phased-Array Receive Beamformer with Two Simultaneous Beams, Polarization Diversity, and 2.1–2.3 dB NF for C/X/Ku/Ka-Band SATCOM

This paper presents a wideband 16-channel dual-beam receive (RX) phased-array beamformer in a 90-nm SiGe BiCMOS process. Radio-frequency (RF) beamforming is implemented, and each channel has 5-bit phase control and 25 dB gain control. The dual-beam channel outputs are combined with two wideband Wilkinson networks. The chip has 27.3 dB electronic gain with a 3.4-28.7 GHz 3-dB bandwidth and a 2.1-2.3 dB noise figure (NF) up to 21 GHz. To the authors' knowledge, this work achieves the widest operating bandwidth among RX beamformers for satellite communication (SATCOM). Application areas are in phased arrays for C/X/Ku/Ka-band SATCOM ground terminals.