A 29–31-GHz, 0.4-dB Amplitude Error and 1° Phase Error Beamforming IC and 20-dB Dynamic Range Power Detector for SatCom Phased Arrays

This brief proposes a 30GHz beamforming transmitter IC (BFIC-Tx) with a compact power detector (PD). The PD utilizes a trace around the output GSG pad of BFIC-Tx, thus, does not need dedicated on-chip coupler area. Such PD enables closed loop power control thus, (i) enables power efficient phased arrays that are capable of adapting radiated power depending on scan losses; (ii) keeps the radiated signal within the emission limits spatially (side lobes) and spectrally (emission mask). In addition, proposed BFIC-Tx employs a modified Gilbert cell like single stage linear-in-dB variable gain amplifier (VGA) which provides 15.5dB gain range (5bits), 0.5dB resolution & 1800 phase shift. Proposed PD has a 20dB dynamic range with only 0.3dB temperature drift across −40 to +85
$^{\mathrm{ 0}}\text{C}$
. BFIC-Tx achieved state-of-art RMS gain error of
$ < $
0.4dB, RMS phase error of
$ < $
1.00, phase resolution of 5.60, PAE > 10% at
$P_{\mathrm{ 1dB}}$
of 11.4dBm.