Design of stripline beam-former network components for low-profile, organic phased arrays in the X Band

This work shows the design of stripline beam-former network components at 9.5 GHz in liquid crystal polymer. Particular emphasis is placed in the implementation of via fences to minimize radiation loss and cross coupling of radio frequency (RF) signals to other bias and digital lines that would feed multiple chips in a single antenna package. Additionally, a Coplanar-Waveguide-to-Stripline transition is presented as a suitable solution for an end-fire RF feed. Measurements of the fabricated striplines showed a normalized return loss better than 20dB over the entire X Band. At 9.5GHz, a line loss of 0.26dB/cm was estimated for the striplines, whereas for the proposed transition, back-to-back measurements showed an insertion loss of 0.42dB.