Design and Experimental Validation of Automated Millimeter-Wave phased Array Antenna-in-Package (AiP) Experimental Platform

Antenna-in-package (AiP) technology has been a main design scheme of millimeter-wave (mmWave) phased array antennas for 5G communications. The beamforming pattern of mmWave phased array AiP is steered by controlling the amplitude and phase excitations of AiP elements. It would be helpful to evaluate the control accuracy of complex excitations and to reliably calibrate mmWave AiP. However, these tasks are not trivial and time consuming in practice, especially when the number of AiP elements is large. To address this problem, this article presents an efficient and automated mmWave phased array experimental platform. To reduce measurement time, a control software is developed to automatically control the AiP and measurement instruments simultaneously. This experimental platform has flexible gain and phase control of AiP element excitations, and customized measurements in an automated and efficient way can be realized. The effectiveness of the experimental platform is demonstrated by several measurement campaigns, where control accuracy, array calibration, and beam steering for mmWave phased array AiP are extensively investigated.