Metamaterial-Inspired CMOS Tunable Microwave Integrated Circuits For Steerable Antenna Arrays

244 Pages·2008·2.83 MB·English

Metamaterial-Inspired CMOS Tunable
Microwave Integrated Circuits For
Steerable Antenna Arrays
by
Mohamed A.Y. Abdalla
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Toronto
(cid:176)c Copyright by Mohamed Abdalla 2009
Metamaterial-Inspired CMOS Tunable Microwave
Integrated Circuits For Steerable Antenna Arrays
Mohamed A.Y. Abdalla
Doctor of Philosophy, 2009
Graduate Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Toronto
Abstract
This thesis presents the design of radio-frequency (RF) tunable active inductors (TAIs)
with independent inductance (L) and quality factor (Q) tuning capability, and their
application in the design of RF tunable phase shifters and directional couplers for
wireless transceivers.
The independent L and Q tuning is achieved using a modified gyrator-C architecture
with an additional feedback element. A general framework is developed for this Q-
enhancement technique making it applicable to any gyrator-C based TAI. The design
of a 1.5V, grounded, 0.13µm CMOS TAI is presented. The proposed circuit achieves a
0.8nH-11.7nH tuning range at 2GHz, with a peak-Q in excess of 100.
Furthermore, printed and integrated versions of tunable positive/negative refractive
index(PRI/NRI)phaseshifters, arepresentedinthisthesis. Theprintedphaseshifters
are comprised of a microstrip transmission-line (TL) loaded with varactors and TAIs,
which, when tuned together, extends the phase tuning range and produces a low return
loss. In contrast, the integrated phase shifters utilize lumped L-C sections in place of
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theTLs,whichallowsforasingleMMICimplementation. Detailedexperimentalresults
are presented in the thesis. As an example, the printed design achieves a phase of -40o
to +34o at 2.5GHz.
AsanotherapplicationfortheTAI,areconfigurableCMOSdirectionalcouplerispre-
sented in this thesis. The proposed coupler allows electronic control over the coupling
coefficient, and the operating frequency while insuring a low return loss and high iso-
lation. Moreover, it allows switching between forward and backward operation. These
features, combined together, would allow using the coupler as a duplexer to connect a
transmitter and a receiver to a single antenna.
Finally, a planar electronically steerable patch array is presented. The 4-element
array uses the tunable PRI/NRI phase shifters to center its radiation about the broad-
side direction. This also minimizes the main beam squinting across the operating
bandwidth. The feed network of the array uses impedance transformers, which allow
identical interstage phase shifters. The proposed antenna array is capable of continu-
ously steering its main beam from -27o to +22o off the broadside direction with a gain
of 8.4dBi at 2.4GHz.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to gratefully acknowledge the enthusiastic supervision of my advisors Pro-
fessor Khoman Phang, and Professor George Eleftheriades for their continuous guid-
ance, and inspiration. Throughout the course of my Ph.D. I have learned alot from
them, and I will always remain indebted to them. I would like to thank Professor
Khoman Phang for consistently being there for me, week after week to meet and dis-
cuss all the different aspects of this work. As for Professor George Eleftheriades, I
would like to deeply thank him for his invaluable advice and feedback, without which
this work would not have been accomplished.
Iwouldalsoliketoextendmythankstheformerandcurrentgraduatestudentsinmy
research group as well as in the electro-magnetics group for their invaluable technical
assistance and friendship from which I have learned alot. From the electronics group,
I would like to thank Dr. Anas Hamoui, Dr. Ahmed Gharbiya, Dr. Mohammad Ha-
jirostam, Joseph Aziz, Pradip Thachile, Masum Hossain, Farsheed Mahmoudi, Stephen
Liu, Euhan Chong, Kentaro Yamamoto, Dr. Faisal Musa, Robert Wang, Dr. Afshin
Haftbaradaran, Imran Ahmed, Navid Yaghini, Oleksiy Tyshchenko, Kevin Banovic,
Tony Kao, David Allred, Akram Nafee, Trevor Caldwell, Samir Parikh, and Nasim
Nikkhoo.
From the Electro-magnetics group, I would like to thank Marco Antoniades for all
the long hours we spent in technical discussions, and also Rubaiyat Islam, Dr. Omar
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Acknowledgements
Siddiqui, Ashwin Iyer, Joshua Wong, and Peter Wang. Also, I would like to thank Tse
Chan and Gerald Dubois for their continuous technical support.
I would also like to extend my thanks the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation
(CMC) for providing the fabrication facilities, and for NORTEL Networks, and the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada for financially
supporting this work.
Lastly, I would like to thank my beloved wife Aliaa, my parents, and my sister for
their continuous support, and encouragement throughout the course of my Ph.D., and
last but not least, I would like to thank my daughter Jana, whom without knowing has
been a motivation for my accomplishments. The least I can do is to dedicate this work
to them.
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List of Related Publications
The material presented in this thesis has been presented in part in the following journal
and conference publications.
Journal Publications
1. M. Abdalla, K. Phang, and G. V. Eleftheriades, “A 0.13µm CMOS phase shifter
usingtunablepositive/negativerefractiveindextransmissionline,”IEEE Microw.
Wireless Components Lett., Vol. 16, no. 12, pp. 705-707, Dec. 2006.
2. M. Abdalla, K. Phang, and G. V. Eleftheriades, “Printed and integrated CMOS
positive/negative refractive-index phase shifters using tunable active inductors,”
IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory and Tech., Vol. 55, no. 8, pp. 1611-1623, August
2007.
3. M. Abdalla, K. Phang, and G. V. Eleftheriades, “A compact highly- reconfig-
urable CMOS MMIC directional coupler,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory and
Tech., Vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 305-3019, Feb. 2008.
4. M. Abdalla, K. Phang, and G. V. Eleftheriades, “A Planar Electronically Steer-
ablePatchArrayUsingTunablePRI/NRIPhaseShifters,” IEEE Trans. Microw.
Theory and Tech., accepted for publication Dec. 2008.
vi
Conference Publications
1. M. Abdalla, and K. Phang , “A 0.13µm CMOS active inductor based on a modi-
fied gyrator-C architecture,” Micronet Annual Workshop, Ottawa, Canada, May
2005.
2. M. Abdalla, G. V. Eleftheriades, and K. Phang, “A differential 0.13µm CMOS
active inductor for high frequency phase shifters,” Proc. IEEE Circuits and Sys-
tems ISCAS 06, Kos, Greece, pp. 3341-3344, May 2006.
3. M. A. Y. Abdalla, K. Phang, and G. V. Eleftheriades, “a tunable metamaterial
phase-shifter structure based on a 0.13µm CMOS active inductor,” Proc. 36th
European Microwave Conf., Manchester, Great Britain, pp. 325-328, Sept. 2006.
4. M. A. Y. Abdalla, K. Phang, and G. V. Eleftheriades, “A bi-directional elec-
tronically tunable CMOS phase shifter using the high-pass topology,” 2007 IEEE
MTT-S Int. Microwave Symp. Dig., Honolulu, Hawaii, pp. 2173-2176, June
2007.
5. M. A. Y. Abdalla, K. Phang, and G. V. Eleftheriades, “A steerable series-fed
phased array architecture using tunable PRI/NRI phase shifters,” Invited paper,
Int. Workshop on Antenna Tech. iWAT 08, Chiba, Japan, March 2008.
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Contents
List of Figures xii
List of Tables xviii
List of Acronyms xx
List of Symbols xxii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Phased Antenna Array Front-Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Thesis Scope and Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 Background 8
2.1 Metamaterials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.1 History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.2 Metamaterial Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2 Tunable Inductors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.1 MEMS Tunable Inductors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.2 Varactor-Based Tunable Inductors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.3 Transmission-Line Tunable Inductors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.4 Gyrator-C Tunable Inductors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 Phase Shifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3.1 Switched-Line Phase Shifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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Contents
2.3.2 Reflection-Type Phase Shifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3.3 Transmission-Type Phase Shifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.4 Lumped-Element L-C Phase Shifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.5 PRI/NRI Metamaterial Phase Shifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.4 Directional Couplers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.4.1 Branch-Line Directional Couplers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4.2 Coupled-Line Directional Couplers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.4.3 Lumped-Element L-C Directional Couplers . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4.4 PRI/NRI Metamaterial Directional Couplers . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.5 Phased Antenna Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.5.1 Antenna Arrays Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.5.2 Microstrip Patch Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.5.3 Phased Array Feed Network Topologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.5.4 Metamaterial Phased Antenna Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3 CMOS Tunable Active Inductors 53
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.2 Traditional Gyrator-C Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2.1 Quality Factor Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2.2 Q-Enhancement Technique For Gyrator-C TAIs . . . . . . . . . 57
3.3 The Modified Gyrator-C Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.4 A Grounded 0.13µm CMOS TAI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.4.1 Circuit Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.4.2 TAI Small-Signal Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.4.3 TAI Noise Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.4.4 Physical Realization and Experimental Characterization . . . . 68
4 Wide Tuning Range CMOS Phase Shifters 83
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.2 High-pass Phase Shifter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.2.1 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.2.2 Design and Physical Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.2.3 Experimental Characterization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.3 TL PRI/NRI Phase Shifter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.3.1 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.3.2 Design and Physical Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.3.3 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.4 MMIC PRI/NRI Phase Shifter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.4.1 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.4.2 Design and Physical Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
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Contents
4.4.3 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
4.5 Passive MMIC PRI/NRI Phase Shifter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.5.1 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.5.2 Design and Physical Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
4.5.3 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.6 Discussion and Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
4.6.1 Group Delay of PRI/NRI Phase Shifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5 A Highly-Reconfigurable Directional Coupler 131
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
5.1.1 Tunable Coupling Coefficient Directional Couplers . . . . . . . . 133
5.1.2 Tunable Operating Frequency Directional Couplers . . . . . . . 133
5.2 Theoretical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
5.2.1 Analysis of the MMIC Directional Coupler . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
5.2.2 MMIC Directional Coupler Modes of Operation . . . . . . . . . 138
5.3 Circuit Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.3.1 MMIC Directional Coupler Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.4 Physical Implementation and Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.4.1 Physical Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.4.2 Experimental Characterization of the MMIC Directional Coupler 148
5.5 Effect Of The TAI On The Coupler Noise Performance . . . . . . . . . 162
6 Electronically Steerable Series-Fed Patch Array 166
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
6.2 Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
6.2.1 Antenna Array Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
6.2.2 Feed Network Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
6.2.3 Interstage Phase Shifters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
6.3 Antenna Array Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
6.4 Physical Implementation and Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . 182
6.4.1 Interstage Phase Shifter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
6.4.2 Steerable Antenna Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
6.5 Antenna Array Linearity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
6.6 Discussion and Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
7 Conclusion 202
7.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
7.2 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
7.3 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
x