Low cost phase shifters and integrated phased antenna arrays designs based on the ferroelectric materials technology

A novel, high performance, and low cost phase shifter design is proposed and its performance has been simulated and numerically evaluated. The proposed design is based on a multi-dielectric material CPW design and the utilization of ferroelectric material for achieving the phase shifting. It is shown that, by including a low loss thin dielectric layer between the coplanar conductors and the ferroelectric materials, significant improvement in the insertion loss can be achieved (∼5 dB) and as high as three fold increase in the figure of merit (°/dB) is possible. A similar multilayer approach was implemented on a phased antenna array using continuous transverse stubs (CTS) technology to achieve low cost and high performance, including beam steering. Initial results are encouraging, particularly regarding the reduction in insertion loss, increasing the input impedance to values of practical interest, and also achieving beam steering.