This paper presents 256-element transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) phased arrays for satellite fixed communication at the Q and V bands, which integrate the phased-array antennas with eight-channel beamforming ICs. Wideband vector-modulated phase shifters (VGPS) and combinations of variable gain amplifier (VGA) and attenuators (ATT) are applied in the TX/RX beamforming ICs to achieve phase and gain tunings with large range and high precision. Based on the proposed beamforming ICs, the TX/RX phased arrays are realized with stacked aperture-coupled microstrip antennas on a cost-effective multi-layer PCB. Each array contains 32 TX/RX beamforming ICs, 256 antennas, and a 1-to-32 Wilkinson power divider/combiner networks. Fabricated in 65-nm CMOS technology, the packaged TX IC achieves an RMS gain error of 0.58 dB and an RMS phase error of 4.5° with 78.5-mW dc power per channel, while the$\text {OP}_{\text {1dB}}$is 9.6 dBm at 50.5 GHz. The packaged RX IC realizes a 5.3-dB NF, 0.47-dB RMS gain error, and 1.7° RMS phase error with 24.2-mW dc power per channel. The Q/V-band phased arrays are capable of scanning ±60°, while the 256-element TX phased array achieves an EIRP of 63.5 dBm. Modulated signal measurements with 200- and 400-MHz QPSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM are also provided.

Large-scale millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) integrated phased array is the key technology to enable broadband 5G and satellite communications. This paper details the design considerations, challenges and trade-offs of mm-Wave integrated phased arrays based on bulk CMOS and multi-layer hybrid PCB technologies. Both technologies attain high yield and low cost for mass production. Important beamforming building blocks are addressed and compared in detail. Demonstrators of integrated phased arrays are presented from circuit to board levels. The 1024- and 4096-element integrated phased arrays achieve the EIRP of 72.5 and 84.0 dBm respectively. Finally, relevant phased-array transceivers and antennas from the recent literature are discussed.

In this paper, system considerations and circuit implementations for 5G millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) phased-array transceiver are presented. High data-rate and medium-range communications pose challenges for the design of phased-array transceiver circuits operating at the mm-Wave band. A possible solution is that the core chip for digital, mixed-signal and RF processing blocks are integrated in advanced CMOS, while power amplifier (PA), low-noise amplifier (LNA) and RF switch are implemented in III-V technologies (i.e., GaAs or GaN). To show the feasibility of such system architecture, key building blocks include high power amplifier (HPA), broadband LNA, amplitude-invariant phase shifter and phase-invariant variable gain amplifier (VGA) are reviewed. The proposed techniques make the mm-Wave phased-array transceiver systems suitable for 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) applications.