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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 49, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2001

A Low-Cost 8 to 26.5 GHz Phased Array

Antenna Using a Piezoelectric Transducer
Controlled Phase Shifter
Tae-Yeoul Yun, Student Member, IEEE, and Kai Chang, Fellow, IEEE,

AbstractA new phased array antenna of wide bandwidth and

good beam scanning angle has been developed using a low cost multiline phase shifter controlled by a piezoelectric transducer (PET)
and a stripline fed Vivaldi antenna array. The multiline progressive
PET phase shifter has a low perturbation loss of less than 2 dB and
a total loss of less than 4 dB up to 40 GHz with a maximum phase
shift of 480 . The proposed phased array antenna consists of four
E- or H-plane Vivaldi antennas, a PET phase shifter, and a power
divider. The phased array shows a wide beam scanning capability
of 27 over a wide bandwidth from 8 to 26.5 GHz covering X,
Ku, and K bands.
Index TermsPhased array, phase shifter, piezoelectric transducer (PET), wideband phased array.

I. INTRODUCTION

OWADAYS multifunction radar and communication

systems demand multiband or multifrequency (i.e.,
wideband) phased array antennas. These phased array antenna
systems play a major role in defense applications [1] and
wireless satellite communication systems [2][4]. Phased
array antenna design, especially wideband design, results in an
expensive system using present day technology. This is due to
the fact that there are typically several thousands of elements
in an array and each element requires a phase shifter and a
driver. Therefore, reducing the cost and complexity of the phase
shifters is an important consideration in the design of phased
arrays. The phased array reported here uniquely incorporates
a multiline configuration with progressive phase shifts [5],
[6]. The array does not individually contain traditional diode
(PIN) or ferrite phase shifters but includes a new phase shifter
controlled by a piezoelectric transducer (PET) or piezoelectric
actuator. The PET is a piezoelectric ceramic, deflected by an
applied voltage. A dielectric perturber attached to the PET
moves vertically on the microstrip lines with the DC bias
voltage. The dielectric perturbation changes the propagation
constant and phase [7]. The new method will reduce the number
) to (
) where is the number
of phase shifters from (
of columns and is the number of rows in a two-dimensional
(2-D) planar phased array [8].
Manuscript received August 3, 2000; revised November 30, 2000. This work
was supported in part by the National Science Foundation and in part by the
U.S. Air Force.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Texas A&M
University, College Station, TX 77843-3128 USA (e-mail: tyyun@ee.tamu.edu;
chang@ee.tamu.edu).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-926X(01)06367-0.

Beam steering methods using a ferrite plate have been developed for a low cost system, but it requires very high voltage up
to several kV [5], [8], [9]. The ferrite plate phase shifter of [8]
requires impedance matching transformers, a polarization rotator for 2-D array, large size lens, power consumption of 0.5 W,
forced air cooling, etc. The new PET controlled multiline phase
shifter does not require any impedance matching circuits and it
has a smaller size; lower power consumption of less than 1 mW,
lower dc control voltage of 60 V, and wider operating bandwidth
due to a true time-delay type of phase shifting. The bandwidth of
the PET phase shifter is very wide since the perturbation on the
transmission line changes the phase but practically introduces
little impedance mismatch and insertion loss [7].
In this paper, the phased array antenna was designed to operate over X, Ku, K bands, from 8 to 26 GHz with a beam
steering angle of 30 . An exponentially tapered slot antenna or
Vivaldi antenna was used to achieve the wide bandwidth performance. A stripline-fed technique was employed to provide
better cross polarization characteristics than microstrip line-fed
Vivaldi antenna [10][12]. A low loss and broadband power divider was designed using the Chebyshev transformers operating
in the same bandwidth [13]. To demonstrate the feasibility of
the multiline PET phase shifter for the phased array antenna application, 1 4 E- and H-plane antenna arrays were built. The
use of multiline PET phase shifter provides a cheap and simple
method for the wideband phased array antenna system.
II. A MULTILINE PROGRESSIVE PHASE SHIFTER CONTROLLED
BY PET
The scanning angle of a phased array is given by the following
equation
(1)
where
beam scanning angle;
distance between two neighboring antenna elements;
propagation constant in the free space;
progressive phase shift.
There are several ways to accomplish beam steering. First,
changing the progressive phase shift is one method to steer
is equal to 2 /
the beam angle. The propagation constant
or 2 / , where
is a wavelength in the free space, is an
operating frequency, and is the light speed. Thus, changing

0018926X/01$10.00 2001 IEEE

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Fig. 1. Configuration of a multiline differential and progressive phase shifter

controlled by a PET.

the operating frequency of the array system with the fixed

and is another method for beam scanning. In addition, if
the propagation constant of the medium between the antenna
elements can be varied at a fixed frequency, the array radiation
beam can be steered [14].
In our approach, only one multiline phase shifter was used
to achieve a progressive phase shift , as shown in Fig. 1. A
dielectric perturber attached to the PET can be easily moved up
and down by a dc bias voltage varied from 0 to 90 V. There is no
deflection (or no perturbation) at 0 V and full deflection down
(or maximum perturbation) at 90 V. This is called a top-down
alignment. The deflection of the PET may be varied linearly
under an applied voltage [15]. The dielectric perturbation
changes the distributed capacitance of the microstrip line,
which is controlled by the PET movement and the applied
voltage. The capacitance variations correspond to variations
in effective dielectric constant, which change the propagation
constant and, thus, the phase shift. Because the phase shift is
proportional to the length of perturbed line, a triangular shape
as shown in Fig. 1, can accomplish the required progressive
differential phase shifts of , 2 , and 3 between the lines for
beam steering.
Because the PET phase shifter is a time delay type phase
shifter, ideally there is no operating frequency limit. An antenna element spacing of 340 mm was chosen by considering grating lobes, scanning blindness [16][18], and the size
of coaxial K-connector. To achieve 30 of beam steering, is
calculated from (1) with a value of 51.5 at 10 GHz. Thus, the
phase shift of perturbed microstrip line 3 ( ), with respect to
, called a differential
the phase of unperturbed line
), is 51.5 . The differential phase shifts of the
phase shift (
(
) and
(
) are 103 and 154.5 , respectively.
line
To calculate the length of the perturber, Eq. (2) [14] and the variational analysis [7], [19] were used
(2)
is (
),
is the
where a differential phase shift
is
perturbed length and a differential propagation constant
). Here
is a perturbed propagation constant at line
(
. In addition,
is proportional to the frequency and so is

Fig. 2. S -parameters of the PET controlled phase shifter with and without
dielectric perturbation on the microstrip line 1.

. The nonlinear frequency dependence of

, i.e., dispersion, is included with the variational calculation [20], [21].
Four microstrip lines were fabricated on RT/duroid 6010.8
substrate with a dielectric constant of 10.8 and thickness of
25 mm. A high dielectric constant of 10.8 was chosen to reduce the length of phase shifter. The distance between the lines
is the same as the antenna element spacing of 340 mm. The
total line length of 2 in is sufficient to obtain the required phase
shifts for the beam steering of 30 . A microstrip line width of
22 mm is designed for a high characteristic impedance ( ) of
by dielectric perturba55 to compensate for a decreased
tion [7]. At the maximum perturbation, i.e., when the dielectric
is close to 50 .
perturber is placed on the microstrip line,
The triangular dielectric perturber used has a dielectric constant
of 10.8 and thickness of 50 mm. The length of perturber at each
line is varied linearly (0.6, 1.2, and 1.8 in). The PET has a size of
2.75 (length) 1.25 (width) 0.085 in (thickness including a
supporter) with a composition of Lead Zirconate Titanate. Thus,
the total size of the phase shifter is 4 2 in . A smaller size can
be realized if a smaller PET is available.
As shown in Fig. 2, the magnitude of -parameters for the
phase shifter is measured with the maximum dielectric perturbation at 90 V on the microstrip line 1. Thru-reflect-line (TRL) calibration was used to remove the coaxial connector-to-microstrip
line transition effect for the -parameters measurement with a
network analyzer HP8510B. But an imperfect calibration and/or
spurious modes generation from the microstrip line cause a fluctuation in the -parameters near 36 GHz. Up to 40 GHz, the
maximum perturbation added loss is about 2 dB and the total
insertion loss ( ) is about 4 dB for a phase shifting of 480
given in Fig. 3(c). The return loss ( ) is less than 15 dB over
most frequency range and about 10 dB near 40 GHz. The magnitude of the -parameters is not much affected by the dielectric
perturbation.
of the microstrip lines with the
Fig. 3 shows how
PET-controlled perturber exhibits a differential progressive
phase shift for line 1, 2, and 3, with respect to the unperturbed

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to 0 , as shown in Fig. 3(a). The nonzero degree phase shift is

caused by misalignment and the limit of PET deflection. The
maximum deflection of PET is 52.17 mm (or 1.325 mm)
at 90 V. As the dc bias voltage increases, the dielectric
perturber moves down, perturbs electromagnetic fields and
changes the phase of each line progressively due to the
triangular shape and monotonically following the applied
voltage. The maximum phase shift is about 480 at line 1 with
respect to unperturbed line 4. This phase shifter was aligned
for three lines having , 2 , and 3 at 10 GHz. In Fig. 3(c),
each line has about 70, 140, and 210 , which are enough to
satisfy the requirement for 30 beam scan angle. At 40 V,
phase differences between two neighboring lines remain fairly
constant over the frequency range as shown in Fig. 3(b). In
Fig. 3(c) at 90 V, the phase shift at line 1 should ideally increase
linearly from 210 to 840 as the frequency increases from 10
to 40 GHz as predicted by (2). However, the phase shift curve
versus the frequency is not a straight line but a curved one. This
is due to the dispersive characteristic of microstrip lines. As the
frequency increases, the effective dielectric constant increases.
Thus, the perturbed amount of the effective dielectric constant
relatively decreases and finally, the phase shift decreases. This
dispersion effect also appears in Fig. 4. In Fig. 3(c), the method
described in [19][21] was employed to calculate the phase
shift and dispersion effect, which agree very well with the
experimental results.
In Fig. 4, differential and progressive phase shifts vs. applied voltages are compared at each line and different frequencies. The amount of phase shift depends on the frequency and
the PET deflection which is controlled by varying the applied
voltage from 0 to 90 V. In the structure of Fig. 1, the largest
PET movement is on the line 3. Thus, the PET with the perturber is prebent up at 0 V and it needs about 20 V to start the
perturbation. Nevertheless, its negative effect is insignificant because the phase shift of the line 3 is the smallest in three lines.
In Fig. 4, the phase shifts from 60 to 90 V are almost the same.
Thus, the dc bias is required only up to 60 V. The dc voltage can
be reduced if the alignment and deflection amount of PET are
improved. Because of the dispersion effect, differences between
,
, and
three lines differential phase (
) exist and become larger at higher frequencies.
III. WIDEBAND PHASED ARRAY SYSTEMS WITH ONE PET
PHASE SHIFTER
Both E- and H-plane 1 4 antenna arrays were separately
designed and compared to operate over 8 to 26 GHz. Antenna
element spacing ( ), length ( ), and progressive phase shift ( )
were chosen by considering grating lobes and scanning blindness [16][18]. To realize wideband operation, the Vivaldi antenna was chosen.
Fig. 3. Differential and progressive phase shifts with respect to the line 4 versus
frequency at different PET applied voltages: (a) 0 V; (b) 40 V; and (c) 90 V.

condition of line 4. The triangular dielectric perturber is raised

over three microstrip lines at 0 V and the phase shift is close

A. E-Plane System
The major advantage of E-plane phased array antenna is
its simple fabrication on one board if a microstrip-fed Vivaldi
antenna is used as shown in Fig. 5(a). The substrate used is
RT/duroid 5870 with a dielectric constant of 2.33 and thickness

YUN AND CHANG: A LOW-COST 8 TO 26.5 GHz PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA

Fig. 4.

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Differential phase shifts versus voltages with respect to the line 4 at different frequencies: (a) 10 GHz; (b) 20 GHz; (c) 30 GHz; and (d) 40 GHz.

of 31 mm. A 20 GHz commercially available 1

4 power
divider was used with low loss and small amplitude and phase
imbalance. A disadvantage of the one board system with the
low dielectric constant is the difficulty to achieve a large phase
shift as compared with one using a higher dielectric constant.
Thus, the length of the phase shifter is 3 in, which is longer than
the 2 in used for the high dielectric constant of 10.8. To achieve
a larger phase shift, the perturber with a higher dielectric
constant of 6 was selected. As a side effect, the operating
frequency of the phase shifter is decreased from 40 to 24 GHz
because the higher dielectric constant perturber produces not
only a larger phase shift but also a higher loss. A photograph
of the E-plane array is shown in Fig. 5(b). Its total size is 7.7
(length) 4.5 (width) 0.6 (height) in .
As shown in Fig. 6, the co- and cross-polarized E-plane radiation patterns and beam scanning were measured in an anechoic
was achieved at
chamber. A scanning angle of 16 to
10 GHz as given Fig. 6(a). The positive angle of beam scanning
was obtained using another triangular dielectric perturber at the

opposite side on the phase shifter with the original PET lifted up.
The bottom-up alignment was used. The radiation patterns and
beam scanning are degraded as the frequency is increased. Measured results at 20 GHz are shown in Fig. 6(b). One reason for
this degradation is that frequency responses of bent microstrip
transitions between the phase shifter and the antenna array in
Fig. 5(b) become worse at higher frequencies. The radiation pattern degradation will be further analyzed later in the H-plane
array. A high cross-polarization level of about 10 dB is due
to the asymmetric microstrip line feeding method of Vivaldi antenna. The most severe effect of asymmetric feed is shown in the
positive angle or the microstrip line feeding side. Thus, the symmetric stripline feeding scheme was employed in the H-plane
experiment [10], [11].
B. H-Plane System
As shown in Fig. 7(a), the H-plane phased array antenna
consists of a power divider, a progressive multiline phase
shifter, and round end, stripline fed, Vivaldi antennas. The

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(a)

(b)
Fig. 5. E-plane phased array antenna: (a) configuration of a phased array
antenna on one board and (b) photograph.

power divider features a return loss of less than 10 dB from 4

to 28.6 GHz from measuring two, back to back, power dividers.
The performance of a vertical transition between the microstrip
line of the phase shifter and the stripline feed of the Vivaldi
antenna was confirmed by a good impedance matching. The
direct vertical transition is much simpler and reduces the size
and cost of the system since no extra connector is used. The
antenna element spacing of 340 mm (8.6 mm) was chosen
to be equal to the spacing of microstrip lines in the PET phase
shifter. A photograph of the H-plane array is shown in Fig. 7(b).
The array size is 4.6 4 1.75 in .
The Vivaldi antenna operates over X, Ku, and K bands (8
26.5 GHz). A round end Vivaldi antenna results in an improved
return loss response [12]. The stripline-fed structure gives a
better cross-polarization characteristic than the microstrip line
fed one, due to the symmetry [10], [11]. In Fig. 8(a), the
stripline-fed antenna is shown. The substrate used is RT/duroid
5870 with a dielectric constant of 2.33 and thickness ( ) of
40 mm. The transition part of the antenna was designed with
) of 29.4 mm; transition length of the
a stripline width (
) of 102.4 mm; slotline width (
) of 7.87 mm;
stripline (
and, transition length of the slotline ( ) of 86.6 mm. These
parameters were obtained from a full-wave analysis using a
method of moment (MoM) software, IE3D. The length of
) is 0.5 in and the length
stripline feeding and transition (

Fig. 6. E-plane phased array antenna: (a) beam scanning radiation patterns in
both directions and cross polarization at 10 GHz and (b) beam scanning and
cross polarization at 20 GHz.

of the exponentially tapered and round-end antenna ( ) is

at 10 GHz). The rounded end design was
1.47 in (
based on experiments; its radius ( ) is about 0.35 in and the
height ( ) is 1.5 in. The return loss of the single antenna element is compared with the array in Fig. 8(b). The array seems
to be operating over 8 to 26 GHz from the return loss response.
The lack of smoothness and the variation of the relative gains
in the radiation patterns of Fig. 8(c) seem to be caused by the
at 10 GHz) of the antenna element.
small size (1.25
long at 10 GHz, the irregularities were
For an antenna of 2
not revealed. These do not significantly affect the radiation pattern of the phased array antenna. The cross-polarization level of
the single antenna element is about 16 dB at 26.5 GHz with
better results at lower frequencies.

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(a)

(b)

Fig. 7. H-plane phased array antenna: (a) configuration with a power divider,
a PET phase shifter, and four stripline-fed Vivaldi antennas and (b) photograph.

The beam steering of the H-plane wideband phased array antenna using one PET phase shifter was demonstrated. The results are shown in Fig. 9 for the following frequencies: 8, 15,
24, and 26.5 GHz. A beam scanning of about 27 and a side
lobe level (SLL) of better than 10 dB were achieved over all
frequency range except at 26.5 GHz. It should be noted that
a grating lobe of about 2 dB appeared near 70 when the
at 26.5 GHz. This grating lobe is not
array was scanned to
shown in Fig. 9(d) because it is out of the range. The erratic gain
and SLL variations at 26.5 GHz may be expected when grating
lobes incur into real space in a small array [22]. A cross-polarization of less than 30 dB was achieved. The cross-polarization is much improved as compared to Fig. 6 of the microstrip
line fed Vivaldi antenna system.
The linear phased array equation is modified with nonuniform amplitude and progressive phase shift. The total electric
) is equal to the product of the field of the single
field (
) and the array factor (
) of the four array
element (
antennas
(3)

Fig. 8. Single stripline-fed Vivaldi antenna: (a) top and cut views, (b) return
losses of the single antenna and the phased array, and (c) radiation patterns of
H-plane co- and cross polarization at 8 and 26.5 GHz.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 49, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2001

Fig. 9. Beam scanning radiation patterns and cross polarizations for the H-plane array at: (a) 8 GHz; (b) 15 GHz; (c) 24 GHz; and (d) 26.5 GHz.

where
is approximately proportional to
assuming that the grating lobe effect is small. A range of 3
by a fitting procedure for
to 4 was chosen for in
the radiation pattern at 26.5 GHz. With 27 of beam scanning
angle, a scan loss of 1.5 to 2 dB is calculated. In addition,
is

(4)
are nonuniform amplitudes and
,
where , , and
, and
are nonuniform progressive phase shifts, at
each antenna input signal. These constants are chosen with
,
, and
at 26.5 GHz
values of 0.9, 0.4, 0.8,

based on measurement results with the power divider and the

PET phase shifter. The large variance of amplitude and phase
is caused by all transitions and connecting losses. In Fig. 10,
the measured and calculated radiation patterns at 26.5 GHz
are compared. They are reasonably well in agreement, even
though the coupling between antennas was not considered in
the calculation.
To compare the H-plane performance with the E-plane array
performance given in Fig. 6(a), beam scanning in both directions
and cross-polarization results at 10 GHz for the H-plane array
are shown in Fig. 11. Beam scanning of
, SLL of about
10 dB, and cross-polarization level of better than 30 dB were
of beam steering
achieved with a dc bias of 60 V. About
could be obtained at 90 V. The beam steering angle and crosspolarization level were much improved in the H-plane array. A
reverse angle scanning is realized by placing another perturber
on the opposite side.

YUN AND CHANG: A LOW-COST 8 TO 26.5 GHz PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA

Fig. 10.

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Calculated and measured radiation patterns at 26.5 GHz: (a) without beam scanning and (b) with beam scanning.

presented a good return loss with round ends. The SLL increase
and gain reduction were analyzed at 26.5 GHz. The new PET
phase shifter and its phased array should have many applications in systems requiring wide bandwidth and low cost.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank M.-Y. Li and C. Wang for
technical assistance and H. Tehrani, and P. Zepeda for their
helpful discussions.
REFERENCES

Fig. 11. Beam scanning radiation patterns in both directions and cross
polarization at 10 GHz for the H-plane array.

IV. CONCLUSION
A new beam scanning method has been demonstrated for
wide bandwidth operation using a multiline progressive phase
shifter, controlled by a PET. The low cost PET phase shifter operated up to 40 GHz with a total loss of 4 dB and phase shift
of 480 . A variational analysis with a dispersion effect accurately predicted phase shift vs. frequency characteristics of the
multiline PET phase shifter. A beam scanning of about
was obtained over 8 to 26.5 GHz covering X, Ku, and K bands.
A good cross-polarization level of better than 20 dB down was
achieved with a symmetric stripline fed Vivaldi antenna which

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Tae-Yeoul Yun (S99) received the B.S.E.E. degree

from the Kyung-pook National University, Korea, the
M.S.E.E. degree from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), and the Ph.D degree from Texas A&M University, College Station,
TX. in 1987, 1989, and 2001, respectively.
From 1989 to 1996, he worked for the optical
telecommunication system group, Electronics and
Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI),
Korea, where he developed 565 Mb/s, 2.5 Gb/s,
and 10 Gb/s systems. Since 2001, he has been with
Triquint, Dallas, TX. He has published over 40 technical papers. His research
interests are passive and active microwave circuits, phased array antenna
systems, and high speed optical telecommunication devices and systems.

Kai Chang (S75M76SM85F91) received the

B.S.E.E. degree from the National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan, the M.S. degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Ph.D. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in
1970, 1972, and 1976, respectively.
From 1972 to 1976, he was with the Microwave
Solid-State Circuits Group, Cooley Electronics
Laboratory, University of Michigan, as a Research
Assistant. From 1976 to 1978, he was with Shared
Applications, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI, where he worked
in computer simulation of microwave circuits and microwave tubes. From 1978
to 1981, he was with Electron Dynamics Division, Hughes Aircraft Company,
Torrance, CA, where he was involved in the research and development of
millimeter-wave solid-state devices and circuits, power combiners, oscillators
and transmitters. From 1981 to 1985, he was with TRW Electronics and
Defense, Redondo Beach, CA, as a Section Head developing state-of-the-art,
millimeter-wave integrated circuits and subsystems, including mixers, VCOs,
transmitters, amplifiers, modulators, upconverters, switches, multipliers, receivers, and transceivers. In August 1985, he joined the Electrical Engineering
Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, as an Associate
Professor and was promoted to a Professor in 1988. In January 1990, he was
appointed E-Systems Endowed Professor of Electrical Engineering. His current
interests are in microwave and millimeter-wave devices and circuits, microwave
integrated circuits, integrated antennas, wideband and active antennas, phased
arrays, microwave power transmission, and microwave optical interactions. He
is author or coauthor of Microwave Solid-State Circuits and Applications (New
York: Wiley, 1994), Microwave Ring Circuits and Antennas (New York: Wiley,
1996), Integrated Active Antennas and Spatial Power Combining (New York:
Wiley, 1996), and RF and Microwave Wireless Systems (New York: Wiley,
2000). He served as editor of the four-volume Handbook of Microwave and
Optical Components (New York: Wiley, 1989 and New York: Wiley, 1990).
He is Editor of the Microwave and Optical Technology Letters and the Wiley
Book Series in Microwave and Optical Engineering. He has published over
350 technical papers and several book chapters in the areas of microwave and
millimeter-wave devices, circuits, and antennas.
Dr. Chang received the Special Achievement Award from TRW in 1984, the
Halliburton Professor Award in 1988, the Distinguished Teaching Award in
1989, the Distinguished Research Award in 1992, and the TEES Fellow Award
in 1996 from the Texas A&M University.