A Ku-Band Dual-Polarized 1024-Element Receive Phased-Array with Four Simultaneous Beams

This paper presents a 1024-element Ku-band dual-polarized receive phased-array at 14-15.6 GHz with simultaneous four-beam capabilities. The array is built on a multi-layer printed circuit board (PCB) with 512 16-channel commercial beamformer chips in SiGe which results in a total of 8096 receive beamformer channels, each with independent gain and phase control. For each dual-polarized antenna, a 2-channel low noise amplifier (LNA) is used to improve the system noise figure (NF). The 1024-element phased-array has a measured antenna gain-to-noise temperature <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(\mathrm{G}/\mathrm{T})$</tex> of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$7.5\ \text{dB}/\mathrm{K}$</tex> at broadside <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$(\mathrm{T}_{\text{ant}}=295\mathrm{K})$</tex> for each beam. Every beam of the phased-array has a scanning range of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$+/-60^{\circ}$</tex> in azimuth plane and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$+/-45^{\circ}$</tex> in elevation plane with low sidelobes, and a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$&lt; -20 \ \text{dB}$</tex> cross polarization levels at all scan angles is achieved. The phased array is polarization agile and can be configured into linear, right-hand circular and left-hand circular polarization. Thanks to its four-beam capability, the array is capable of supporting four concurrent data streams with different directions of arrival and a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$&gt; -40 \ \text{dB}$</tex> beam-to-beam isolation is obtained. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first demonstration of large-scale receive phased array with four simultaneous beams on the same aperture at this frequency band and is a good candidate for Ku-band communication links.