Dissertation
Fully Integrated Silicon Based Multi-element Transmit Beamformers for Satellite Communications
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2013
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/111617
Abstract
Compared to traditional omnidirectional communication systems, beamformers (also called phased arrays) transmit and receive signals in a certain direction with suppression in other directions and thus they are advantageous in terms of power consumption, signal-to-noise ratio, channel capacity and interference rejection.
Electronically steered beamformers can accommodate fast or frequently moving transmitters/receivers and have been widely employed in satellite communications, radio astronomy, high-speed point-to-point communications, wireless HD audio/video transmission and many other applications.
My research objective is to implement the RF front-end of transmit beamformers in silicon and realize high linearity, low power and broadband applications. Integrating the beamformer system on chip leads to savings in cost and power consumption. Three digitally controlled multi-element transmit beamformers have been developed in a 0.18um SiGe BiCMOS technology, targeting different frequency bands, one for Ku band (12.5-14.7 GHz), another for LSCX band (0.8-12 GHz) and the other for Ka band (27-31 GHz) satellite communications.
Gain control capability and phase control capability of the designed transmit beamformers are provided by the variable gain amplifiers and the phase shifters, respectively and are shown as measurement or post-layout simulation results. The power amplifiers push the RF output power to a certain level and allow array elements to be driven directly by the RF outputs. The splitter in the Ku band transmit beamformer provides one input to four outputs conversion. In addition to parasitics prediction from electromagnetic simulations, the layout of the multi-element transmit beamformers are symmetrically designed to reduce gain/phase imbalance between channels.
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Details
- Title
- Fully Integrated Silicon Based Multi-element Transmit Beamformers for Satellite Communications
- Creators
- Siqi Zhu
- Contributors
- Deukhyoun Heo (Advisor)John Ringo (Committee Member)Partha Pratim Pande (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, School of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 89
- Identifiers
- 99900581739701842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation