A Fully Integrated 384-Element, 16-Tile, W-Band Phased Array with Self-Alignment and Self-Test

This paper describes the design and implementation of a scalable W-band phased-array system, with built-in self-alignment and self-test, based on an RFIC transceiver chipset manufactured in the TowerJazz 0.18-$mu$m SiGe BiCMOS technology with $f_T$/$f_{MAX}$ of 240-/270-GHz. The RFIC integrates 24 phase shifter elements (16TX/8RX or 8TX/16RX) as well as direct up- and down-converters, phase-locked loop with prime ratio frequency multiplier, analog baseband, beam lookup memory and diagnostic circuits for performance monitoring. Two organic printed circuit board interposers with integrated antenna sub-arrays are designed and co-assembled with the RFIC chipsets to produce a scalable phased-array tile. Tiles are phase-aligned to one another through a daisy-chained local oscillator (LO) synchronization signal. Statistical analysis of the effects of LO mis-alignment between tiles on beam patterns are presented. Sixteen tiles are combined onto a carrier PCB to create a 384-element (256TX/128RX) phased array system. A maximum saturated effective isotropic radiated power of 60 dBm (1 kW) is measured at boresight for the 256 transmit elements. Wireless links operating at 90.7 GHz using a 16-QAM constellation at a reduced EIRP of 52 dBm produced data rates beyond 10 Gbps for an equivalent link distance in excess of 250 meters.