A Scalable Dual-Polarized 256-Element Ku-Band Phased-Array SATCOM Receiver with ±70° Beam Scanning

This paper presents a scalable 256-element Ku-band dual-polarized phased-Array SATCOM receiver. The array elements are spaced λ/2 apart at 12.25 GHz in the x and y directions. This phased array uses 64 silicon quad-core receive chips with 8 channels to feed a dual-polarized 2×2 quad antennas. Those silicon core-chip are QFN packaged and soldered directly on a 12-layer low-cost printed circuit board with integrated stacked patch antennas and Wilkinson combiners. The measured patterns of the 256-element phased-array show near-ideal patterns with a scan range of ±70° in E- and H-planes and low sidelobes. This array has a 3-dB instantaneous scanning bandwidth of 10.6–12.5 GHz. The design achieves a low cross polarization < -27 dB over a wide scan range of ±70° and it is scalable to allow large-scale phased-arrays construction of 1024 elements or larger. To our knowledge, this represents state-of-the art in Ku-band receive phased-arrays in terms of integration level. The array compact size of (19.7 cm × 22 cm) makes it suitable for a low-cost mobile Ku-band SATCOM terminal.