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Title: Millimeter-Wave VSWR Resilient Built-In Self-Test Electronics For Phased Array Applications
Committee:
Dr. Hua Wang, ECE, Chair, Advisor
Dr. Madhavan Swaminathan, ECE, Co-Advisor
Dr. Justin Romberg, ECE
Dr. Arijit Raychowdhury, ECE
Dr. Matthieu Bloch, ECE
Dr. Christian Fager, Chalmers University
Abstract: 5G communication is becoming an enabling technology to support the exponential growth in data traffic due to its large available frequency spectrum. However, the over the air path loss increases as a function of frequency, limiting the achievable communication distance, requiring phased arrays to compensate. However, the antenna elements couple with one another, which causes the impedance presented to the electronics to deviate from the ideal 50Ω terminations in which they were designed for (VSWR). This issue compromises both the array’s radiation pattern, as well as the electronics’ performance in both linearity and efficiency. Reconfigurable amplifiers can compensate for this impedance mismatch and maintain the electrical performance, but they require VSWR resilient power/impedance sensors to perform their self-healing algorithms. Reconfigurable phased arrays can also modify their hardware in order to maintain the desired overall radiation pattern but require VSWR resilient power/impedance sensors. This thesis focuses on the design of VSWR-resilient mm-Wave impedance/true-power sensors which can non-intruisively be integrated with power amplifiers to enable real-world deployment of reconfigurable amplifiers under these VSWR environments.
