A NEW PRECISION X-BAND PHASE-SHIFTER
E. F. Barnett
A microwave phase shifter having a
linear calibration and capable of shifting
the phase through any number of cycles con-
tinuously was described by A. G. Fox in
1947.1 This device consists of two 900
differential phase sections (quarter-wave
sections) in round waveguide with a ro-
tatable 1800 differential phase section
(half-wave section) between them. An in-w.o
cident linearly polarized wave is con-
verted to a circularly polarized wave by
the f irst quarter-wave section. The half-
wave section reverses the sense of the
circular polarization and introduces a
phase-shift which depends linearly on the
angle through which this section is ro-
tated, each degree of rotation corres-
ponding to two degrees of phase shift.
The second quarter-wave section converts
the reversed circular polari'zation back
to linear polarization.
Although a number of phase shifters
of this type h1v3 been developed for spe-
cial purposes, *f there has been a need
for a general purpose lnstrument of this
type for use in microwave test procedures.
The instrument described in this article
is designed to cover the entire useful
frequency range of X-band waveguide, from
8.2 to 12.41 kmi/s. With this object in
view, quarter-wave and half-wave sections
having good performance over this range
were designed.
Differential Phase Sections
One of the simplest types of differen-
tial phase sections which give good per-
formance over a fairly broad bandwidth con-
sists of a section of round waveguide
loaded with a slab of dielectric material
across a diametral plane of the guide.
A number of such slabs was made and tested,
varying the shape and the material to ob-
tain optimum performance. As this inves-
tigation was mainly empirical, and as the
results did not differ significantly f om
those obtained by other investigators,5
only the final design arrived at for the
dielectric slabs will be described.
Figure la shows the dielectric slab
used in the quarter-wave section, and
Figure lb, that used in the half-wave
section. The material used in the final
design was polyethylene (E 22.25),
materials with low dielectric constants
having been found to give the best per-
formance over a broad frequency band.
TJhe quarter-wave slab has a single pyra-
midal matching taper at one end and a
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Hewlett-Packard Company
Palo Alto, California
330 - 0
06
/
RTER*WAVE SLAB
---825
/
___e_______
l_l___l
o
| (EE) (b) HALF-WAVE SLAB
Fig. 1 - Poyethlene slabs used in differential
phase sections.
forked taper at the other end. This de-
sign was chosen for convenience in mount-
ing the slab in the waveguide and to per-
mit one end of the sl ab to dovetail into
the adjacent forkld taper of the half-
wave slab, as will be shown later.
It was not possible to choose the
over-all dimensions of the quarter-wave
and half-wave sections for optimum per-
formance, because these dimensions were
determined in advance by practical con-
siderations. It was decided to use the
same mechanical components as were used
in an availaple X-band attenuator of the
rotary type.4 This limited the total
length of round guide containing the
tbree differential phase sections to
about 8" and fixed the internal diameter
of the round guide at 1".
Figure 2 shows the ellipticity of the
wave emerging from the quarter-wave sec-
tion of Figure la when the incident wave
is linearly polarized at an angle of 450
to the dielectr,ic slab. The ellipticity
ratio is fairly low over most of the fre-
quency band from 8.2 to 12.4 kmc/s, but
there are sharp peaks at 10. 7 and 11,7
kmc/s. These peaks are due to the sec-
tion Of guide containing the dielectric
slab acting: as a resonant cavity for
150
 2.4 the fundamental (TEj1) mode with the di-
____ - electric tapers. The field-patterns
o2.2 ______ _ashown are those for the air-filled round
>2.U - guide. The modes will, of course, be
E2.0_,_. _ greatly modified by the dielectric alab,
2 1_8 but the principle of excitation may never-
theless be underatood qualitatively. If
E ______ ____ _______ the TE11 and TM1l field patterns are
1E6
superimposed, the transverse components
IA _ l of the electric field will add in the re-
LL | ,gions marked A, which are air-filled, and
o
<
1.2_L _
_
_ _ / [V
_ subtract in the regions marksd B, which
are dielectric-filled. Tus, the resul-
*Vt3
9 10 11 12
t2 V
13 ]tanttransverse
/
will be relatively
component of the field
strong in the air byandthe
FREOUENCY IN KILOMEGACYCLES PER SECOND weak in dielectric, as
the required
Fig. 2 - Ellipticity produced by dielectric-slab boundary condition at the air-dielectric
quarter-wave. interface.
Some attempts were made to reduce the
higher-order waveguide modes. The small coupling int1o te M1l mode by changing
peak at 9.8 kmc/s is also due to a re- the shape of the matching tapers, but
sonance of this type. These resonances without success. From Figure 3b, it can
have heretofore limited the useful band be seen that the component of the electric
width of this type of differential phase f ield of the TM11 mode in the direction
section, of propagation has two maxima in the plane
of the dielectric slab. By inserting
In order to find ways of suppressing strips of resistive material in these po-
these resonances, the modes responsible for sitions in the slab (Figure 3c) it was
them were investigated. By examining the possible to suppress the resonance at 11.7
field patterns of the first few round- kmc/s while introducing relatively little
guide modes in order of increasing cut-off attenuation for the TE1 mode. Neverthe-
frequency, it is possible to make a rough less, the attenuation Introduced by this
guess as to how they will be modified by
the introduction of a dielectric slab.
Taking into account the fact that the pre..
sence of the slab removes the degeneracy r -
which exists between different orientations A' &
i8
of some round-guide modes, it was found w
that there are just three modes which could -2
account for the observed resonances. Two (a) Fundamentol(TE,,)Moe
of the-se are modifications of the TE2
mode, and the third is a modif ied TMl
mode. The order of their cut-off fre-fr- -
quencies suggests that the first two modes
can be identified with the observed re-
sonances at 9.8 and 10.7 kmc/s, while the
TMI mode accounts for the resonance at
11.l;|7 kmc/ s . (bl TM,, MODE
Strips of Resistive Materiol
It can be seen from the field pat- Inserted Here
terns of thbse modes that the symmetry of /
the TE 1 mode in any orientation is such /
that i can be coupled to the fundamental
TE 1 mode only by asymmetrical discontin-
uiies in the guide, wfiereas the TM Ic} Dielectric Slab
mode can be excited even by symxretr±l al
discontinuities, such as the tapered ends
of the dielectric slab. This suggests
Fig. 3 - Excitation of
electric tapers.
TM,,-mode resonance by diel-
that the excitation of the resonances ob-
served at 9.8 and 10.7 kmd/s is due to resistive loading was sufficient to in-
slight accidental asymmetries. By more crease considerably the insertion loss of
careful alignme t of the slab, it was the phase shifter constructed from these
possible to suppress these two resonances components, and the decision to introduce
almost entirely, while the strong reso- loss in this way was made only because
nance at 11.7 kmc/s was almost unaffected, most of the applications envisaged for the
phase shifter are not affected by the pre-
Figure 3 s#hows how the TM11 mode sence of a small insert ion loss8 (of the
resonance is excited by the interaction ofb order of 1 db).

151

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 In addition to the resonance peaks in tion because the latter were not practical
Figure 2, there is a gradual increase of the to make in this case.
lli.pticity toward the high end of the band.
This is due to an increase of the differen- Two pairs of posts were inserted in
tial phase shift of the dielectric-slab the wal3l of the quarter-wave section in
quarter-wave section with frequency. One the plane of the electric field of the in-
method of compensating for this ef^ct Is to cident wave. Their purpose was to improve
change the cross-section of the guide in the match of the section, and their design
such a way as to lower the cut-off.fequen- was entirely empirical.
cy of the mode polarized with its electric
field parallel to the slab relative to that The performance of these differential
of the perpendicular mode. A small change phase sections is shown in Figure 5. The
in the cutoff wavelength of any waveguide two solid curves in Figure 5a show the
mode produces a change in the propagation differential phase shift of the quarter-
constant (i.e. in the phase shift per unit wave section before and after the addition
length) iwich is proportionaZ to the guide of the compensating circular recesses.
wavelength, and hence decreases steadily (The resistive-strip resonance suppressors
with increasing frequency, as required. were used in both cases.) T1he range of
variation of the differential phase shift
The quarter-wave and half-wave sec- over the band from 8.2 to 12.4 kmi/s was
tions were compensated by modifying their reduced from 170 to 110 by the addition of
guide cross-sections as shown in Figure the recesses. It appears that even more
14. The quarter-wave section was loaded compensation might be obtained by increas-
periodically with a series of circular ing the depth of the recesses and reducing
recesses in the guide wall lying in a the length of the slab. The differential
plane perpendicualr to that of the slab, phase shift of the half-wave section with
The half-wave section was loaded with a the compensating grooves is shown by the
pair of grooves in this same plane. The broken curve.
effect of the circular recesses can be cal-
culated with the aid f available micro- Figure 5b shows the attenuation of
wave design formulas,5 and proves to be a the quarter-wave section for a wave with
differential phase shift which decreases its electric field parallel to the dielec-
with frequency even more rapidly than the tric slab. This attenuation increases
guide wavelength. The grooves in the cen- with frequency to a maximum of about 1 db
ter section give a change in the differen- at 12.4 kmi/s. The attenuation of the
tial phase shift proportional to the guide quarter-wave section for a wave polarized
wavelength, as explained above. They were perpendicular to the slab was less than
used in preference to circular recesses 0.2 db at any frequency in the band. The
of the type used in the quarter-wave sec- attenuation of the half-wave section was

45,
, - "8.3?5
()C

(a) QUARTER-WAVE SECTION

~~~~~~
7 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.100 I ~

SECTION'A-A'
L ~~~~425
(b) HALF -WAVE SECTION

Pt.g. 4~- Compensated differential phase sections.

152

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 <et)
01 COMlPENSATED
0
-:90
r-g 185 c
Tilhe maximum ellipticity ratio now occurs
at 12.4 kmc/s and is less than 1.2.
w
.° 95 .O8
<Ea0gc HALF-WAVE 5d shows the input standing-
Figure
ratios of the quarter-wave and half-
SECTION

W_ $85;_ 175 3, -
wave
8C QRRE O _____170 o wave sections for an incident wave with
-ICUNGOMPENSATED QATRWV
IiI its electric field parallel to the di-
1313
ETO
'J8 9 10
212 electric slabs. These measurements refer
(a 11

1,
____________________ __
x
____
__ _
to the sections shown in Figure 4, except
ATTENUATION QUARTER-WAVE SECTION that the two pairs of posts shown
the in
cn
0'oo (ELECTRIC FfLDOFPARALLEL ro Dt -quarter-wave section were omitted. The
OzF.b VSWR for the quarter-wave section is
zC (b)-I _ __ everywhere less than 1.25 and, for the
half-wave section, less than 1.35. The
2 c. EL9loPTICTY,(3
E RATIO Of QUARTER-WAVE SECTION VSWR for the mode polarized parallel to
_2 9 0 2
__ the slabs (which is not plotted) is of
the same order of magnitude, but general-
3 c(C) 2 13 ly less than, that for the parallel mode.
1.
-- VSWR OF QUARTER-WAVE PLATE Performance of Phase-shifter
1.4 VSWR OF HALF-WAVE PLATEI
cl (.3 ELECTRIC FtELD PARALLEL T DIELECTRIC SLAB) Figre 6 tows how these components
U) 1.2 owt z_- s4-. , are assembled in the phase shifter. To
.-___ (d) - conserve space the adjoining tapers of
LOi 9 10 2 13 the quarter-wave and half-wave slabs were
FREQUENCY IN KILOMEGACYCLES PER SECTION made to overlap each other to some extent.
Fig T-hrformance of differential phase aections. Tisperformance
the overlappingofwill
the theoretically cause
device to differ
from that calculated for the same com-
found to be less than 0.3 db at any fre- ponents in tandem, but the measured over-
quency in the band for either direction all performance appears to justify the
of polarization, eveh with the slab loaded assumption that this effect is negligible.
with resistive strips to suppress the TM11-
mode resonance. This is considerably less The rectangular-to-round transition
than that of the quarter-wave section for sections contain horizontal resistance
the direction of polarization parallel to cards which absorb the small component of
the slab. Apparently the shape and spacing the wave entering the transition from the
of the tapered ends of the half-wave slab round end with the wrong direction of
are such that they excite the TM,1 mode polarization to propagate out into the
much less strongly than do those of the rectangular guide. This small component
quarter-wave slab. results from the imperfections in the
different ial phase sections.
The ellipticity produced by the com-
pensated quarter-wave section is ahown The phase shifter was calibrated at
in Figure 5c. The resonances appearing twelve frequencies spaced approximately
in Figure 2 have been entirely eliminated, uniformly over the band from 8.2 to 12.4

RTATA4crLo

Fig. 6 - Assembled phase shifter.

153

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kmi/s. The cqlibration was made by a with the center section rotatect 'o give
bridge technioue s.milar to that describ- is shown in the upper curve in Pigure 7d.
ed by P. G. Smith. 0The measured error The maximum value is about 1.5 db at 12.4
was largest at 12.4 krnc/s. The cali- kmc/s. A residual peak near the resonance
bration curve for this frequency is shown at 11.7 kmc/s is evident. The peak-to-
in Figure 7a. The origin of the phase- peak variation of insertion loss with
shift scale is arbitrary, so that the phase setting shown in the lower curve in
significant quantity for specifying the Figure 7d reached a maximum value of 0.25
maximum error is the total range of db at 12.4 kc/s. Below 10 lc/s it was
variation of the phase error, designated nowhere more than .05 db.
It seems likely that the performance
uiERRORIN P1ASE.5URATON
ERRORIN PHiASE CALIBRATION AT 12.4 KMC/SEC
0SEC
AT . .of this phase shifter could be further
impr6ved by refinement s in the component
z __lt differential phase sections, In par-
F)0 ° /
ticular, the cifferential phase shift
[C could be made still flatter over the fre-
0 270 (a) quency band using the compensation tech-
°> 0 90 ISO 270 360 niques described. It mnight al180 be
NOMINAL PHASE SHIFT IN DEGREES E
2.0 possible to reduce the insertion loss by
__ designing the tapered ends of the quarter-
0 .c- wave slabs so as to couple less strongly
to the undesired TM11 mode. However,
0 9 0
3 2 13 practical experience in the quantity pro-
13 1duction of this type of phase shifter has
shown that some of the design parameters
1.2
>
.2 ANY PHASE SETTING are difficult to control to the accuracy
1.0l3- !i (C) 2 3 required, and these difficulties limit the
performance attainable at present.
MAXIMUM RiSERTON LOSS FOR ANY PHASE SETTING Biblio2j apby

_~
Wu ~
RANGE OF ~
VARIATIO OISRT2 OS
lPh
OF IWRTN LOSS wITH PHS SETT1 4eGe
A. G. Fox,
IHPhase Changer"
"An Adjustable Waveguide
___._ 12 Proc. I.R.E., vol. 35, pp.
_ g > 10 11 1489-1498 (December 1947)
9
FREQUENCY IN KILOMEGACYCLES PER SECOND
(d) 2. E. M. Pur cell et al. U. S. Patent No.
2, 07 849. Filed October
Pig. 7 -Performance of phase shifter. 2, 1943
3. R. M. Brown and A. J. Simnons, "Di-
by 1, in the figure. Tis is the maximum electric Quarter-wave and
error which can oc ur in measuring any Hlalf-wave Plates in Cir-
phase difference., is slightly less cular Waveguide"
than 20 at 12.4 kmc/s. The error varies Naval Research Lab. Report
fairly slowLy wit-h phase setting, so that #4218 (November, 1953)
a smaller error can be specified for
smaller phase shifts. 4. B. P. Hand, "Broadband Rotar Wave-
guide Attenuator'
The maximum error is shown as a func- Electronics, vol. 27 pp.
tion of frequency in Figure 7b. The error 184-5 (January, 19543
is greatest at the high end of the band
which correlates with the performance of 5. C. G. Montgomery, R. H. Dicke and E. M.
the components. Below 10 kmc/s, the meas- Purcell, "Principles of Microwave
ured error is well under 10. It will be Circuits"
noticed that the error in the calibration Radiation Lab. Series,
of the phase-Shifter is considerably small- vol. 8, p. 296, McGraw
er than the errors in the differential Hill Book Company, New York
phase shifts of the individual components.
This Is the result of a theorem pointed 6. P. G. Smith, M. I. T. Master's Thesis,
out by Simmons which states that the de- 1948
partures from linearity of the calibration
of a phase shifter of this type depend 7. A. J. Simmons, "Errors in a Microwave
only in the second order on the errors in Rotary Phase Shifter"
the individual components. Correspondence in Proc.
The input VSWR of the phase-shifter I.R.EE., vol. 40, p. 869
(July, 1952)

l5ih
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