An integrated phase shifting frequency synthesizer for active electronically scanned arrays

This paper presents the design of an integrated phase shifting frequency synthesizer for active electronically scanned arrays. The proposed frequency synthesizer, implements a 3-channel beam steering unit based on a local oscillator (LO) phase shifting approach that relies on the joint use of external loop filters and voltage-controlled oscillators. The design has been fabricated using AMS 0.35-μm SiGe BiCMOS process and it takes a die area of 9.38-mm2. Based on a frequency independent architecture and targeting space and weight constrained applications, the integrated circuit (IC) allows to program, its output channels, with a 10-bit precision 0° to 360° mutual phase shifts.