A True Time Delay 16-Element 4-Beam Digital Beamformer

Large phased arrays are limited by inaccurate beam steering (squinting) and by distortion in analog-to-digital conversion. This paper introduces the first integrated digital true time delay beamforming receiver. The true time delay eliminates squinting, making it ideal for large-array wide-bandwidth...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sunmin Jang, Rundao Lu, Jaehun Jeong, Flynn, Michael P.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic beams
Array signal processing
Baseband
Delay effects
delay line
Delays
Digital beamforming
Distortion
Gain
linear array
linearity
MIMO
phased-array
receiver
true time delay
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Summary:Large phased arrays are limited by inaccurate beam steering (squinting) and by distortion in analog-to-digital conversion. This paper introduces the first integrated digital true time delay beamforming receiver. The true time delay eliminates squinting, making it ideal for large-array wide-bandwidth applications. The beamformer incorporates a new current-steering DAC architecture providing a constant output impedance to improve ADC linearity. This significantly reduces distortion, leading to an SFDR improvement of 13.7 dB from the array. The prototype achieves an EVM better than -37 dB for 5 MBd 256-QAM and 512-QAM. The measured beam patterns are near-ideal for both conventional and adaptive beamforming. The prototype digital beamformer supports 16 antennas and 4 independent beams. It occupies only 0.29 mm 2 and consumes 453 mW.
ISSN:2375-0995
DOI:10.1109/RFIC.2018.8429016