A Ka-Band Eight-Channel Transmit Beamformer Based on 0.13-μm Bi-CMOS for SATCOM

This paper proposed the design and implementation of a Ka-band eight-channel transmit beamformer for SATCOM phased array, which employs the 0.13-µm SiGe Bi-CMOS technology and the wafer-level chip-scale packaging (WLCSP) technology. By using the switched-type attenuator and the active vector modulated phase shifter, the beamformer only consumes a quiescent current of 180 mA under 1.6-V supply voltage. The measurements show that from 27 to 31 GHz, a single-channel gain of 19.4~22.7 dB and a minimal OP1dB of 9.3 dBm can be achieved. Meanwhile, the measured RMS gain error is less than 0.48 dB and the measured RMS phase error is below 2.6°. The total size of the chip is 5.2×5.6 mm
²
including pads.