Phased Array Antenna System Enabled by Liquid Metal Phase Shifters

This paper introduces a proof of concept design for the first phased array antenna design enabled by liquid metal (LM) technology. The proposed LM phased array antenna system is based on substrate integrated waveguides (SIW) to excite an
$1\times 4$
printed dipole antenna array. To effectively control the phase distribution on SIW power dividers, the liquid metals performed as a shorting pin along the body of the SIW are implemented. The proposed LM integrated SIW structure enables a large-phase tuning ratio of 360°. This new LM based phase shifters perform stable, low loss and wideband performance for the phased antenna array. In addition, a reconfigurability of the phase controls on the proposed phased antenna array can be realized when the LMs are filled in and out on the designated vias on the SIWs. To validate the proposed antenna array, simulation and measurement are carried out in this work. A prototype of the proposed LM phased array antenna operates at 10 GHz is measured, which confirms the array can have a 12% impedance bandwidth and the maximum gain of 8.3dBi with the scanning range of ±38° along the end-fire direction. This proposed technology is reliable and cost-effective for wideband phased array applications