Cell-based programmable phase shifter design for pulsed radar SoC

For a pulsed Radar SoC, the programmable phase shifter is a critical timing control unit as it dictates the “time-of-arrival”, i.e., the interval between the timing a pulse signal is launched and the timing an echo pulse is sampled. A pulsed Radar SoC often sweeps this timing parameter (from a smaller value to a larger value) to set the distance of detection of an object in a scanning fashion from the center of the Radar towards the outer regions. In this paper, we demonstrate that such a programmable phase shifter can be designed with only standard cells, while being able to control the time-of-arrival in 10,000 steps with a step size of 10ps within a wide tunable range of [0ns, 10ns]. Measurements results in a 65nm process are reported.