A Ka-Band Deployable Active Phased Array Transmitter Fabricated on 4-Layer Liquid Crystal Polymer Substrate for Small-Satellite Mount
Dongwon You, Xiaolin Wang, Hans Herdian, Xi Fu, Ho‐Jun Lee, Michihiro Ide, Carrel da Gomez, Zheng Li, Jill Mayeda, Daisuke Awaji, Jian Pang, Hiraku Sakamoto, Kenichi Okada, Atsushi Shirane
Abstract
Lightweight and deployable phased arrays are important in Small-Satellite (Small-Sat) constellation systems to reduce price and increase link distance. This article proposes a Ka-band deployable active phased-array TX on a 4-layer liquid crystal polymer (LCP) board for a lightweight and high stowage rate solution to break through the trade-off between high antenna aperture size and small form factor in phased arrays. This article describes detailed designs of the phased array and its building blocks with the proposed 4-layer LCP substrate structure. Assembled with the beamformer ICs (BFIC), a Ka-band 8×4-element deployable active phased-array TX on the 4-layer LCP substrate is fabricated. The proposed deployable phased-array TX can steer the beam from -50° to 50°. The phased-array TX can drive 32-APSK DVB-S2 signal with a -28.7 dB EVM as well, revealing that the deployable phased-array TX performs with high phased-array performance. Furthermore, the TX achieved the lightest and thinnest phased array with 0.96 kg/m <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> areal mass and 0.9 mm thickness. This groundbreaking research sets the stage for the realization of affordable and user-centric satellite communication (SATCOM) in low-earth orbit (LEO).