K/Ka-Band Hybrid-Packaged Four-Element Four-Beam Phased-Array Transmitter and Receiver Front-Ends With Optimized Beamforming Passive Networks

This article presents K/Ka-band four-element four-beam phased-array transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) front-ends. Hybrid-packaged technology is employed, consisting of one TX/RX 65-nm CMOS beamformer and four 0.1- mu m GaAs power amplifiers (PAs)/low-noise amplifiers (LNAs). Each beam maintains a full connection to every antenna element without degrading array gain. A compact and symmetrical layout floor-plan is proposed to reduce signal routing complexity. Signal distribution and combination are performed through two optimized tree-type and rectangular-shaped beamforming networks to improve the beam-to-beam consistency and isolation. The TX/RX CMOS beamformer provides an energy-efficient solution by adopting low-power phase/amplitude controls. The second harmonic trap is co-optimized with the transformer-based matching to enhance linearity in the TX. A new L-type inductor-enhanced matching network is devised in the RX to broaden bandwidth. In addition, the digital circuit introduces a voting mechanism to improve fault tolerance. Utilizing fan-out wafer-level chip-scale packaging, both hybrid-packaged TX and RX front-ends occupy an area of 50 mm(2) . The proposed TX demonstrates a measured small-signal gain of 23.5-26.5 dB across 17.7-20.2 GHz. The output 1-dB compression point ( P1 dB ) and the maximal power-added efficiency (PAE(MAX) ) reach 21.2-23.2 dBm and 26%-30%, respectively. The proposed RX achieves a measured average gain of 24 dB across 27.5-30 GHz with a minimal noise figure (NF) of 3.1 dB. Both TX and RX exhibit uniform performance across all channels, while consuming a maximal power of 2600 and 264 mW, respectively, equivalent to 162.5-16.5 mW per element per beam.