A W-band Combined Architecture Passive Phase Shifter in SiGe BiCMOS

A compact low phase error W-band 6-bit passive phase shifter is presented. The proposed phase shifter architecture consists of a combination of High Pass/Low Pass (HP/LP) filters-based phase shifters, a Reflection Type Phase Shifter (RTPS) with capacitive load and a delay line. To minimize the losses PiN-diodes were utilized as switches, due to their superior performance especially in such high frequencies. This phase shifter was designed and implemented in a 140nm SiGe BiCMOS technology and achieves a phase error rms of 1.97º, a Phase to Gain (P2G) error rms of 0.69 dB in a bandwidth of 92 – 100 GHz. The average loss is 14.61 dB at 96 GHz. The fabricated phase shifter occupies 0.22 mm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> area and dissipates 20.88 mW from a 2.4 V supply for the biasing of the PiN diodes. The achieved performance makes this phase shifter a very good candidate for W-band phased array systems.