A 2-D Electronically Steered Phased-Array Antenna With 2$\,\times\,$ 2 Elements in LC Display Technology

For the first time, a 2-D electronically steered phased-array antenna with a liquid-crystal (LC)-based variable delay line is presented. The structure, which is designed at 17.5 GHz, consists of a 2 × 2 microstrip patch antenna array, continuously variable delay lines with a novel geometry, RF feeding, and biasing networks. The expected insertion loss of the variable delay line is less than 4 dB with a maximum differential phase shift of 300°. During the measurements, the antenna is steered by applying an appropriate dc biasing in the range of 0-15 V to the variable delay lines. It is also shown that the return loss is always better than 15 dB at the operating frequency when the antenna is steered.

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