A 2 - 18 GHz Continuously Variable 0 - 360° Phase Shifter

The design and performance of a new hybrd vectorial 0 - 360° active phase shifter is presented. The originality of this circuit consists in using a single FET and high-pass and low-pass filters to provide the four 90 degrees phase shifted vectors instead of bandwih limiting passive couplers. The active combiner circuit, offering an amplitude weighting capability, acts also as a modulator with a 2 dB gain and a 20 dB on-off ratio. The measured differential insertion phase is continuously variable from 0 to 360 degrees over the 2 - 18 GHz frequency band; the global insertion loss is about 10 dB. Finally a monolithic module is presented for phased array application.