Novel Design of a 2.5-GHz Fully Integrated CMOS Butler Matrix for Smart-Antenna Systems

This paper presents a novel design of monolithic 2.5-GHz 4times4 Butler matrix in 0.18-mum CMOS technology. To achieve a full integration of smart antenna system monolithically, the proposed Butler matrix is designed with the phase-compensated transformer-based quadrature couplers and reflection-type phase shifters. The measurements show an accurate phase distribution of 45plusmn3deg, 135 plusmn 4deg, -45 plusmn 3deg, and -135 plusmn 4deg with amplitude imbalance less than 1.5 dB. The antenna beamforming capability is also demonstrated by integrating the Butler matrix with a 1 X 4 monopole antenna array. The generated beams are pointing to -45deg, -15deg, 15deg, and 45deg, respectively, with less than 1deg error, which agree very well with the predictions. This Butler matrix consumes no dc power and only occupies the chip area of 1.36 times 1.47 mm
²
. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of the single-chip Butler matrix in CMOS technology.