Broadband tunable beam steering with a broadband and linear phase shifter

A broadband tunable phased array antenna system was fabricated using a broadband and linear phase shifter. For the frequency between 1.6 and 2.4 GHz, more than +/- 19 degrees of beam steering was achieved with a 1 x 4 array. The main part of this system consists of a low loss, compact, linear tunable phase shifter which is implemented with left-handed transmission line theory. For the same frequency range, the phase shifter showed less than 5.1 dB insertion loss for the whole 360 degrees phase variation with +/- 21 degrees of phase deviation from a linear line for the control voltages. By combining this phase shifter with a broadband quasi-Yagi antenna, a broadband tunable phased array was fabricated. (c) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1830-1832, 2014