A circuit-fed tile-approach configuration for millimeter-wave spatial power combining

In this paper, a circuit-fed spatially combined transmitter array is described for operation at 44 GHz. The array contains 256 elements where each element consists of a monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit amplifier and a circularly polarized microstrip patch antenna. The array is constructed using 16-element tile-approach subarrays. Each subarray is a two RF-level (three-dimensional) multichip module containing integrated microstrip patch antennas. The basic construction of the transmitter array resembles tile-approach phased arrays; however, the implementation has been tailored for the power-combining application. The peak performance at 43.5 GHz is equivalent isotropic radiated power of 40.6 dBW (11570 W), effective transmitted power (P-eff) of 5.9 W, dc-to-RF efficiency of 7.3%, and system gain of 35 dB.