A C-Band Compact High-Linearity Multibeam Phased-Array Receiver With Merged Gain-Programmable Phase Shifter Technique

This paper presents a C-band four-element eight-beam phased-array receiver. By utilizing the proposed merged gain-programmable phase shifter (GPS) technique, the chip achieves a 360° phase-shifting range with <2.4° rms phase error and a 20.5-dB gain range with <0.18 dB rms amplitude error at 4.5-7 GHz. The chip demonstrates a 23.5-dB gain and a 6.5-dB noise figure (NF) at 5 GHz. By utilizing the multigated transistor (MGTR) technique, the receiver realizes a -10.8-dBm input 1-dB gain compression point (IP1dB) and a -4.7-dBm input third-order intercept point (IIP3) at 5.5 GHz. The proposed receiver occupies 6.4 × 3.1 mm² area and consumes 1265 mW, which achieves a state-of-the-art number of concurrent reconfigurable beams and an excellent linearity among silicon-based beamformers.

I. Introduction

The increasing demand for real-time high-definition video data transfer drives the need of ad-hoc high-speed wireless data link for portable devices, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), etc. To enable high throughput and low latency wireless communication, the emerging Wi-Fi 7 adopts a new 6 GHz band cooperating with 2.4/5 GHz and expands the single channel bandwidth from 160 MHz in Wi-Fi 6 to 320 MHz. The employment of 4096 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) with high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) imposes stringent requirements to in-band distortion. Silicon-based analog phased-array receiver can be utilized to overcome the path loss and improve the signal quality through beamforming technique. Compared with digital beamformers, RF implementations offer low complexity and high energy efficiency by saving power hungry analog-to-digital converters and wideband digital signal processors [1]-[3].