A novel monolithic integrated phased array antenna using 4-bit distributed MEMS phase shifter and triangular patch antenna

This paper presents the design of a monolithically integrated micro strip equilateral triangular patch antenna array with a digital (distributed MEMS transmission line) DMTL 4-bit phase shifter having an area of 3.1×1.9cm² only. The phase shifter constitutes of 130 capacitive switches which are loaded on a (coplanar waveguide) CPW line with dimensions of 90-70-90. The design is made basically for the wireless communication purposes and its best optimization is one for the K_u band applications at 15GHz. The simulations are performed in HFSS (version 13.0). The parallel inset feeding technique is applied in the design where only one input port leads to various branches and no external feeding is required for the matching purposes. The calculated return loss is 22.57dB and overall gain of the system is found to be 7.81dB. The 4-bit phase shifter employs a phase shift of 22.5°/45°/90°/180° respectively.