A Defected Microstrip Structure (DMS)-Based Phase Shifter and Its Application to Beamforming Antennas

Author

Can Ding ; Guo, Y. Jay ; Pei-Yuan Qin ; Bird, T.S. ; Yintang Yang

Author_Institution

Key Lab. of Wide Band-Gap Semicond. Mater. & Devices of Minist. of Educ., Xidian Univ., Xian, China

Volume

62

Issue

2

fYear

2014

fDate

Feb. 2014

Firstpage

641

Lastpage

651

Abstract

In this paper, a beam-steering antenna array that employs a new type of reconfigurable phase shifter is presented. The phase shifter consists of a number of cascaded reconfigurable defected microstrip structure (DMS) units. Each DMS unit is made by etching a slot in a microstrip line and loading the slot with PIN diodes. The “on” and “off” states of the PIN diodes in the DMS unit provide the phase shifts by changing the current paths. Analyses on the performance of various phase shifters cascading different numbers of DMS units are conducted by both simulations and experiments. Using the proposed phase-shifter units and Wilkinson power dividers, a four-element beam-steering antenna array was designed, fabricated, and tested. Experimental results agree well with the simulated ones. The proposed antenna array employing DMS-based phase shifters offers a low-cost solution to beamforming in wireless communications.

Keywords

array signal processing; microstrip antenna arrays; p-i-n diodes; phase shifters; power dividers; DMS units; DMS-based phase shifter; PIN diodes; Wilkinson power dividers; beam-steering antenna array; beamforming antennas; cascaded reconfigurable defected microstrip structure; defected microstrip structure; etching; four-element beam-steering antenna array; low-cost solution; microstrip line; on-off states; phase-shifter units; reconfigurable phase shifter; wireless communications; Capacitors; Insertion loss; Loss measurement; Microstrip; PIN photodiodes; Phase shifters; Substrates; Beam steering; Wilkinson power divider; defected microstrip structure (DMS); phase shifters; reconfigurable structure;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-926X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TAP.2013.2290802

Filename

6663629