A new approach to design low cost, low complexity phased arrays

This paper presents a new design for a low cost, low complexity phased array. The proposed design allows control of the phase progression in the entire phased array by using only two phase shifters. As a result, cost and complexity of the phased arrays based on this approach can be significantly reduced. The proposed phased array is composed of directional couplers, amplifying stages, power combiners and two phase shifters. The phase shifters are simple and compact consisting of varactor diodes and inductors. As proof-of-principle, a 2 GHz eight-element phased array with an approximate scan angle of 25 degrees is presented.