A beam steering unit for active phased-array antennas based on FPGA synthesized delay-lines and PLLs

Abstract

This paper introduces the design and implementation of a high performance, reconfigurable four channel beam steering unit (BSU) for active phased-array antennas based on FPGA synthesized delay-lines and PLLs. The unit allows a per channel programmable time delay equivalent to a phase shift tuning step of about 1.4°. A prototype has been implemented to validate the viability of the proposed approach across the 2.4-GHz industrial-scientific-medical (ISM) band.