Design and Characterization of T/R Module for Commercial Beamforming Applications

Abstract

In the smart antenna system, the transmit and receive (T/R) module is one of the core components as it accounts for nearly 45% of the overall smart antenna system cost. Due to the high implementation cost of the T/R module, the literature was mainly centered around the military and satellite radar applications. However, over the years, the cost of the T/R module has been reduced drastically by leveraging on the advanced manufacturing technology, volume production pricing and adaptation of the commercially available off-the-shelf components, as a result, the adoption of the T/R module in commercial and industrial application become possible. In this work, we have proposed a commercially affordable T/R module that operates in 4.9-5.9 GHz band for commercial and industrial applications. The T/R module was designed, calibrated, and characterized for use in the beamforming smart antenna system. The design process including the circuit, schematic and printed circuit board (PCB) were highlighted. The proposed recursive calibration process managed to correct the phase error to ± 1° and amplitude error to ± 0.2 dB. In addition, the amplitude distribution of 0.5-1-1-0.5 combination has successfully suppressed the side-lobe level (SLL) to-28.7 dB for 0°,-22.71 dB for ± 20° and-12.77 dB for ± 40° beam steering. This work is aimed to promote the adoption of the T/R module into the commercial and industrial applications such as public or government infrastructure.

Leveraging the Role of Dynamic Reconfigurable Antennas in Viewpoint of Industry 4.0 and Beyond

“…It can also come up with an adaptive beamforming capability that steers the nulls to the interference, and radiated beam toward the targeted client. Therefore, to obtain high gain and smart performance for modern industrial communication, the array designs with beamforming, reconfigurability, and real-time controllability features are obvious preferences [ 7 , 51 , 52 , 82 , 83 ]. Reconfigurability can be categorized into electrical, optical, mechanical, and smart materials-based techniques.…”

An 8 × 8 ultra‐wideband tightly coupled dipole active phased array

“…T/R module is the key building block in the entire active phased array systems. [13][14][15][16][17][18] For large-scale radar systems, often hundreds or even thousands of T/R modules are used in different platforms, accounting for nearly 45% of the total system cost. 19 According to the way of assembling, the T/R module can be divided into "brick" structures and "tile" structures.…”

“…T/R module is the key building block in the entire active phased array systems 13–18 . For large‐scale radar systems, often hundreds or even thousands of T/R modules are used in different platforms, accounting for nearly 45% of the total system cost 19 .…”

Design and Implementation of RF Front-End Module Based on 3D Heterogenous-Integrated Wafer-Level Packaging

“…In order to solve this problem, researchers focus on the attempts to integrate multi RF front-end devices into one compact module by using 3D packaging technology. Reference [1] introduces several multi-layer substrates which are commonly chosen for microwave or millimeter-wave 3D packaging process, like high temperature co-fired ceramic (HTCC) [2,3], low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) [4][5][6], and organic substrate [7,8]. HTCC is often considered to be the lowest cost ceramic technology [9], but it suffers from a significant insertion loss due to the low conductivity of tungsten used as the metal of transmission, especially at mm-wave frequencies.…”