3162 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO.

7, JULY 2019

Local Oscillator Phase Shifting and Harmonic

Mixing-Based High-Precision Phased Array for
5G Millimeter-Wave Communications
Binqi Yang , Zhiqiang Yu , Member, IEEE, Ruoqiao Zhang , Jianyi Zhou, Member, IEEE,
and Wei Hong , Fellow, IEEE

Abstract— This paper presents a 28-GHz low-cost high-

precision phased array for fifth-generation millimeter-wave com-
munications. The local oscillator (LO) phase shifting approach
and the subharmonic mixing technique are adopted to achieve a
full 360° phase-shifting range with up to 10-bit phase resolution
and ultralow magnitude deviation. Each phased channel in this
array contains a 1-bit 180° intermediate frequency phase shifter
and a low-voltage varactor-tuned reflective-type phase shifter at
LO path. The LO phase shifting is used to achieve fine phase
shifting with low-magnitude variation. The subharmonic mixing
enables lower phase range and lower operation frequency at
the LO path. The measured root-mean-square phase error and
magnitude variation are around 0.3° and 0.1 dB, respectively.
The over-the-air phased array calibration and measurement are
also performed. The eight-element phased array achieves +/−50°
beam scanning angle and fine beam resolution less than 1° step.
The gain flatness of the phased array is less than +/−1dB at
1-GHz signal bandwidth. The eight-element array achieves an Fig. 1. Simplified block diagram of typical millimeter-wave HBF system.
effective isotropic radiated power of 41 dBm at 10-dB power
backoff. The measured error-vector-magnitude is 1.72% with
a 500-MHz orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing QAM-64 in [8] and [9], the beam-switching antenna systems in [10]
signal.
and [11], the active phased array-based hybrid analog and digi-
Index Terms— Beamforming, fifth-generation (5G) communi- tal beamforming (HBF) systems in [3], [6] and the fully digital
cations, millimeter-wave, over-the-air (OTA) calibration, phase beamforming (DBF) system in [12]. The passive multibeam
shifter, phased array.
antennas and beam-switching antenna systems have limited
I. I NTRODUCTION beam states, which may cause bad signal coverage or even
blind area. The DBF system can offer the greatest system
F IFTH-GENERATION (5G) mobile communications aim
to provide high data throughput and system capacity
by utilizing the millimeter-wave frequency bands [1]–[5].
performance. However, high cost, power consumption, high
hardware complexity, and signal processing complexity are
To enable 5G millimeter-wave mobile communications, still major constraints for commercial use of DBF systems.
advanced multibeam antenna systems or beamforming systems At the moment, the phased array-based millimeter-wave HBF
are introduced to achieve higher gain, multistream transmis- communication systems are a compromise solution for 5G
sion, and better signal coverage [3], [5]–[7]. millimeter-wave communications [3], [6], [13].
Many advanced multibeam antennas and passive/active The typical architecture of phased array-based millimeter-
beamforming systems have been proposed for 5G millimeter- wave HBF system is shown in Fig. 1. As a tradeoff between
wave communications, such as the passive multibeam antennas cost/hardware complexity and system performance, the ana-
log phased arrays are employed in HBF architectures to
Manuscript received October 15, 2018; revised December 17, 2018; replace most digitized RF transceiver chains. In HBF architec-
accepted January 20, 2019. Date of publication February 26, 2019; date of
current version July 1, 2019. This work was supported by the National Natural tures, analog beamforming precoding performed by large-scale
Science Foundation of China under Grant 61627801. (Corresponding author: phased arrays is used for achieving high directional gain and
Binqi Yang.) coarse multistream interference suppression. DBF precoding
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves,
School of Information Science and Engineering, Southeast Univer- is implemented by the small number of digital transceiver
sity, Nanjing 211189, China (e-mail: bqyoung@live.cn; zqyu@seu.edu.cn; chains to obtain multistream capability and fine interference
zrqjoel@163.com; jyzhou@seu.edu.cn; weihong@seu.edu.cn). cancelation. Phased arrays with precise electronically steerable
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. beam are demanded for millimeter-wave HBF systems. The
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2019.2899598 performance of analog beamforming is highly determined by
0018-9480 © 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
YANG et al.: LO PHASE SHIFTING AND HARMONIC MIXING-BASED HIGH-PRECISION PHASED ARRAY 3163

phase shifter resolution, phase error, and magnitude variation

of the phase-shifting circuits. Recently, some compact analog
phased array solutions for 5G millimeter-wave communica-
tion have been proposed at integrated circuit level [14]–[23].
However, the resolution of the most millimeter-wave phase
shifter is only 5-bit (∼11.2° step) or 6-bit (∼5.6° step).
In addition, most of the millimeter-wave phase shifters also
suffer from large phase errors and high-magnitude variations.
The millimeter-wave phased arrays with high phase shifter
resolution, such as phased arrays in [22] and [23], are still
very rare. The null-area rejection levels, sidelobe rejection
levels, and beam pointing accuracy of the radiation beam of
the phased array will be deteriorated by these imperfections
of millimeter-wave phase shifters. To achieve high-analog
beamforming performance, a phase-shifting circuit with fine
phase resolution and low-magnitude variation is needed.
This paper presents a local oscillator (LO) phase-shifting-
based 28-GHz band eight-element phased array for 5G
millimeter-wave communications. In this phased array, the LO
phase-shifting approach is employed to obtain low-magnitude
variation. The subharmonic mixing technique enables the use
of a phase shifter with lower required phase-shifting range
and lower operation frequency. The phase-shifting circuit can Fig. 2. Block diagram of the proposed LO phase-shifting-based millimeter-
wave phased array architecture.
offer full 360° phase-shifting range with up to 10-bit phase
resolution and ultralow magnitude variation. The over-the-
air (OTA) phased array calibration and measurement were out-of-band interferences. A low-voltage varactor-tuned
performed in this paper. The OTA measured results show reflective-type phase shifter is placed at the LO path for
that good RF performance and beamforming performance adjusting the phase of the LO signal. Low-magnitude variation
is achieved by the phased array. The rest of this paper is can be obtained across all phase states.
organized as follows. Section II describes the architecture of In order to reduce the required phase-shifting range at the
the proposed 5G millimeter-wave phased array. In Section III, LO path, the subharmonic mixing technique is used. The phase
the design and measurement of the proposed phase-shifting of the RF chain is tuned due to the fact that the output signal
circuit are described. Section IV gives the OTA phased array phase of a mixer is a linear combination of the phases of
calibration and performance measurements. Finally, conclu- the LO signal and other input. For the phase-shifting circuit
sions are drawn in Section V. in Fig. 2, the output signal phase is given as follows. For
upconversion, the RF output signal is given by
II. LO P HASE -S HIFTING -BASED 5G M ILLIMETER -WAVE
P HASED A RRAY A RCHITECTURE sRF (t) = sBB (t) · e j (ωIFt +φIF ) · e j 2(ωLO t +φLO )
= sBB (t) · e j [(2ωLO +ωIF )t +(2φLO +φIF )] (1)
A. Phased Array Architecture With LO Phase-Shifting and
Subharmonic Mixing where sBB (t) is the complex baseband signal, ωIF is the IF
Fig. 2 shows the simplified block diagram of the proposed carrier frequency, ωLO is the half LO frequency, φLO and φIF
millimeter-wave phased array architecture. In order to obtain are the phases of the LO path and the phase of the IF path,
fine phase-shifting resolution and low-magnitude variation, respectively. For downconversion, the IF output signal is
the LO phase-shifting approach and the subharmonic mixing sIF (t) = sBB (t) · e j ωRF t · e− j 2(ωLO t +φLO ) · e j φIF
technique is adopted. The phase-shifting network is composed
= sBB (t) · e j [(ωRF−2ωLO )t −(2φLO −φIF )] . (2)
of a set of frequency-conversion phase-shifting channels. The
LO power splitter is used to provide coherent LO signals for The phase-shifting range of the LO path is doubled by the
multiple channels. The modulated signals of multiple channels subharmonic mixer. The complexity of the LO reflective-type
are split or combined by using the intermediate frequency (IF) phased shifter is reduced since the required LO phase-shifting
power splitter/combiner network. range is greatly reduced. To further reduce the required LO
Each phase-shifting channel has an RF front end and phase-shifting range, a wideband balun-based 1-bit wideband
a frequency-conversion phase-shifting circuit with phase- 0° /180° phase shifter is designed at the IF path. Thereby,
shifting implemented at LO path and IF path. The phase- the required phase-shifting range at the LO path is slightly
shifting circuit is bidirectional in the sense that it can large than 90° to accomplish a total phase-shifting range of
be shared by the transmit chain and receive chain. The more than 360°. In addition, the low phase-shifting range also
bandpass filters at the RF paths are used to provide high ensures that the varactor in the phase shifter can be operated
image rejection, LO leakage rejection, and rejections of other at a low tuning voltage range from 0 to 5 V. Then, the LO
3164 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 7, JULY 2019

Fig. 3. Two external control frames supported by the proposed eight-element

phased array.

phase shifters can be directly driven by the outputs of the

12-bit control digital-to-analog converters (DACs). With the
12-bit control DACs, high phase-shifting precision can be
easily achieved.
As shown in Fig. 2, a low-cost field-programmable gate
array (FPGA) is used as flexible control interface and phase
lookup table (LUT). The 12-bit DACs and the 1-bit IF phase
shifters are simultaneously updated through the FPGA when
the external update trigger signal appears. Since the relative
phase of the LO phase shifter does not increase linearly with
the increasing of tuning voltage, the phase LUT with 10-bit Fig. 4. Illustration and link budget of the RF phase-shifting architecture and
phase address is used for linearization of phase-shifting. Each the LO phase-shifting architecture.
phase address corresponds to a 13-bit phase shift word, which
is composed of 1-bit IF phase state and 12-bit DAC word. Two
external control frames with different lengths are supported by
the eight-element phased array. As shown in Fig. 3, the 100-bit
long control frame is used for flexible beamforming precoding
by setting the phase of each element separately. The 30-bit
short control frame is used for fast beamforming control with
linear phase precoding. The 4-bit mode setting is used to
indicate what kind of control frame format is adopted. If the
mode code is “1000,” the 100-bit word in the shift register will
be latched and then processed according to long control frame
format. If the mode code is “1010,” the 30 least significant
bits in the shift register will be latched and then processed Fig. 5. Loss comparison of the Wilkinson power splitter networks for
according to short control frame format. In both two control different frequencies.
frame modes, each element can be individually turned on or off
by setting the TR on/off bits. The independent ON–OFF control
can be used for OTA phased array calibration as well as Second, the required phase-shifting range at the LO path is
beamforming training in practical applications. low owing to using the subharmonic mixer and the 1-bit IF
The RF carrier frequency of the proposed eight-element phase shifter. The operation frequency of the LO phase shifter
phased array is 27.954 GHz. The IF carrier frequency is is also halved. These enable the use of a reflective-type phase
2.754 GHz, and the half LO-frequency is 12.6 GHz. shifter with simple tunable loads at lower frequency. Another
benefit is that the implementation difficulty and complexity
B. Advantages and Constraints of the Proposed Phased of the LO circuits can be reduced by using only half LO
Array Architecture frequency.
The proposed phased array architecture exhibits several In addition, the insertion loss caused by the RF phase shifter
advantages. First, a significant advantage of the LO phase- (in RF phase-shifting architecture) is eliminated by using
shifting approach is that the magnitude variation of the RF LO phase-shifting. As shown in Fig. 4, the maximum linear
signal chain is low across all phase-shifting state. The conver- output power of the passive mixer is limited due to its nonlin-
sion loss of a mixer is nonsensitive to the LO power when the earity (the output power at 10-dB power backoff is around
mixer is driven to switching state. Although the LO power may −20 ∼ −10 dBm for most of the millimeter-wave passive
be changed due to the limited quality factor of the varactors in mixers). In RF phase-shifting architecture, the RF power
the reflective-type phase shifter, the magnitude of the RF signal splitter loss and the RF phase shifter loss will increase the
chain is almost constant. The drawback of the reflective-phase power gap between the front-end input and target PA output
shifter is the magnitude change. However, this drawback has (around 15 dBm). Fig. 5 shows the total loss of the power
a minor effect on the performance of the LO phase-shifting splitter network. An eight-way power splitter at RF frequency
architecture. With 12-bit control DAC, high phase precision has total 11.5-dB loss (insertion loss + splitter loss), which
and low-magnitude variation enable accurate precoding for is 1.4 dB higher than at IF frequency. The insertion loss of
analog beamforming. a typical RF phase shifter is around 8 dB. Thus, additional
YANG et al.: LO PHASE SHIFTING AND HARMONIC MIXING-BASED HIGH-PRECISION PHASED ARRAY 3165

TABLE I
C OMPARISON OF P ERFORMANCE , C OST, AND P OWER C ONSUMPTION
B ETWEEN D IFFERENT P HASE -S HIFTING A RCHITECTURES

Fig. 6. Power budget of the eight-way LO distribution network.

Fig. 7. Linear array of N elements.

mixer. Thereby, the power consumption will be significantly

increased when the element number is large.

C. Beam Steering
The far-field radiation pattern of a phased array can be
represented by the array factor multiplying with the ele-
ment pattern. For an N-element uniform linear array shown
in Fig. 7, the array factor is given by [24]

N
AF(sin θ ) = Jn exp(− j k0nd sin θ ) (3)
n=1
amplifier stage at mixer output or at PA input is required where θ is the azimuthal angle, Jn is the complex excitation,
to generate the same RF transmit power. In contrast, around k0 is the wavenumber in free space, and d is the element
19.5-dB loss between mixer output and PA input is eliminated spacing. Let ψ = sin θ , we have
by using the LO phase-shifting architecture, since the power
splitter and the phase shifter is moved to IF path and LO path. 
N
AF(ψ) = Jn exp(− j k0ndψ). (4)
A simple comparison of performance, cost, and power
n=1
consumption between the LO phase-shifting architecture and
other phase-shifting architecture is given in Table I. The The array factor is a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of the
digital phase-hifting approach has good performance but high spatial discrete excitation source {Jn }. The beam is pointed
hardware cost and high power consumption in IF part and at normal direction by applying in-phase excitation. The beam
digital processing part [12]. The typical RF phase-shifting can be steered by applying a linear phase shifting between the
architecture has low complexity while the precoding accuracy adjacent elements
is very limited. In comparison, the proposed LO phase-shifting 
N
architecture has high phase-shifting performance. Its cost J exp( j nφ) exp[− j k0ndψ]
seems to be lower than the RF phase-shifting architecture since n=1
the millimeter-wave phase shifter suffers from high price. 
N     
φ φ
One of the major constraints of the LO phase-shifting archi- = J exp − j k0nd ψ − = AF ψ − .
tecture is that it needs an additional LO distribution network as k0 d k0 d
n=1
well as the IF power splitter network. The basic power budget (5)
of the eight-way LO distribution network is shown in Fig. 6.
The relation between beam positioning θb and phase shifting
The LO distribution network will increase the complexity and
is given by
difficulty in circuit layout, especially for a large-scale phased  
array. In addition, each phase-shifting channel requires an LO φ
θb = sin−1 . (6)
driver amplifier to maintain enough power level for the passive k0 d
3166 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 7, JULY 2019
Fig. 8. Beam steering step with different phase shifter resolution.
Fig. 9. Schematic of the proposed phase-shifting circuit and the subharmonic
mixer.
The beam steering step is
1 1
θb = φ =  φ.
k0 d cos θb (k0 d)2 − φ 2
Fig. 8 shows the beam steering step of the phased array with
different phase shifter resolution and half-wavelength element
spacing. It can be seen that 0.12° beam steering step can
be achieved by 10-bit phase shifter resolution. Finer beam
steering resolution can be achieved by using nonuniform phase
difference to form a finer equivalent linear phase shifting step.
III. P ROPOSED P HASE -S HIFTING C IRCUIT
The basic schematic of the proposed phase-shifting circuit
and the subharmonic mixer is shown in Fig. 9. The sub-
harmonic is based on balanced antiparallel diode pairs. The
LO frequency is doubled due to the full-wave rectification
effect. The proposed phase shifting circuit is composed of
two parts, the 1-bit 0°/180° phase shifter at the IF path
and the continuously tunable reflective-type phase shifter at
the LO path. Compared with other phase shifter type (e.g.,
the vector-modulators [25]–[27] and the switch-type phase
shifters [28]–[30]), the varactor-tuned reflective-type phase
shifter has the advantages of zero power consumption, low
cost, and low complexity [17], [31]. In this design, the required
phase-shifting range of the reflective-type phase shifter is only
90° to achieve a full 360° phase-shifting range.
Fig. 10. (a) Measured result of the IF 1-bit phase shifter and (b) conversion
loss of the subharmonic mixer versus LO power.
A. IF 1-bit Phase Shifter
As shown in Fig. 9, the 1-bit phase shifter at the IF path is
based on a wideband 1:1 balun (transmission line transformer)
and a single-pole-double-throw switch. The transmission line
transformer-based balun can provide excellent magnitude bal-
ance and phase balance across wideband. By switching the
dotted terminal and the invert terminal of the balun, the phase
of the IF path can be inverted. The measured results shown
in Fig. 10(a) illustrate that the IF 1-bit phase shifter can
achieve accurate 180° phase shift at the frequencies from
2.25 to 3.25 GHz. Around +/−0.4° phase error is caused by
the phase unbalance of the wideband balun.
B. LO Varactor-Tuned Reflective-Type Phase Shifter
The reflective-type phase shifter has the features of low cost,
simple circuit, and continuously tunable phase. In addition,
(7)
the single control voltage scheme makes it very suitable for
multichannel systems. The major drawback of the reflective-
type phase shifter at high frequency is magnitude variation and
the limited bandwidth due to the parasitic effects. However,
the effects of these weaknesses can be ignored in the LO
phase-shifting architecture. As shown in Fig. 10(b), the con-
version loss of the mixer at switching state is nonsensitive to
the LO power.
As shown in Fig. 9, the basic reflective-type phase shifter
consists of a 90° hybrid coupler and two identical varactor-
tuned reflective loads. The 90° hybrid coupler is based on
the typical branch-line hybrid coupler [32]. The magnitude
and phase response of the phase shifter is determined by the
input reactance of the tunable reflective loads. Let jXL denotes
the input reactance of the reflective loads. The reflection
coefficient is given by
j XL − Z0 1 + j Z 0/X L
= = (8)
j XL + Z0 1 − j Z 0/X L
where Z 0 represents the input impedance of the port of the
coupler. The phase of the reflected wave is given by
φr = arg() = 2 tan−1 (Z 0 /X L ) = 2 tan−1 (−Z 0 YL ) (9)
where YL = −1/X L is the susceptance of the reflective load.
From (9), the variable susceptance YL should be centered
YANG et al.: LO PHASE SHIFTING AND HARMONIC MIXING-BASED HIGH-PRECISION PHASED ARRAY 3167

Fig. 11. Schematic of the varactor tuned reflective load.

at zero to obtain an optimal phase-shifting range. In addi-

tion, the phase-shifting range can be enlarged by increasing Fig. 12. (a) Input admittance of the reflective load and (b) simulated results
impedance Z 0 . As shown in Fig. 11, the admittance of the of the reflection coefficient of the reflective load.
varactor load at the reference plane A is


j YL = j ωCt 1 − ω2 Ct L s . (10)
In this paper, the parasitic inductance L s is 0.45 nH and
the tunable capacitor Ct is 0.69∼2.3 pF (tuning voltage is
decreased from 5 to 0 V). The admittance jY L is − j 0.0332 ∼
− j 0.0577 S at ω/2π = 12.6 GHz. To optimize the phase-
shifting range, a microstrip open stub is shunted with the
varactor. The input admittance at the reference plane C is
presented as


j YL = j ωCt 1 − ω2 Ct L s + j Y1 (11)
where the admittance of the open-circuit stub jY1 is
j Y1 = j tan(2π L 1 /λ)/Z 0 = j 0.04545 (12)
with length L 1 and λ is the wavelength of the microstrip
at the half LO frequency. For Z 0 = 50
and Y1 =
0.04545, the length L 1 is around 0.184 λ and results in
Y L ∈ (−0.01225, 0.01225)S. Fig. 12(a) shows the shifting
of the input admittance of the varactor-tuned load with the
open stub. The reflection coefficient is given in Fig. 12(b).
With the shunt open stub, the phase-shifting range φr is
increased from 22.8° to 104.2°. Additional loss is caused by Fig. 13. (a) Layout of the LO reflective-type phase shifter, (b) EM simulated
the parasitic series resistance of the varactor and the loss of and measured results of phase-shifting, and (c) measured LO phase noise.
microstrip line. To obtain an adequate phase-shifting margin,
a quarter-wavelength high-impedance line (Z 1 = 1.26 Z 0 )
is used to enlarge the phase-shifting range. The source port using a vector network analyzer (VNA) and an auxiliary
impedance is around 1.58 Z 0 at the reference plane C. As bidirectional upconverter/downconverter. Fig. 14(b) shows the
shown in Fig. 12(b), the simulated phase-shifting range φr measured relative phase with 12-bit raw DAC code and 1-bit
is around 150° at the reference plane B. IF phase control. The total phase-shifting range is around
The layout of the LO reflective-type phase shifter is given 460°. A calibrated phase LUT with 10-bit address (phase state
in Fig. 13(a). As shown in Fig. 13(b), the measured phase- code) is generated for the phase-shifting circuit. The measured
shifting range of the LO phase shifter is 138°. This result magnitude variation and phase-shifting at 28 GHz is presented
is in good agreement with the result of electromagnetic (EM) in Fig. 14(c) and (d), respectively. It can be seen that the
cosimulation. The impact on LO phase noise is also measured. measured magnitude variation is less than +/−0.2 dB over
Fig. 13(c) shows the phase noise of the input signal source and all phase states (0∼1023), and the absolute phase error is
LO phase noise after phase shifter. It can be observed that low almost less than 0.2°. Fig. 14(e) shows the measured relative
additive phase noise is introduced by the LO phase shifter. phase over 1-GHz bandwidth (with 5.625° phase step). This
result shows that good phase-shifting precision is achieved
over 1-GHz bandwidth. The measured root-mean-square (rms)
C. Performance of the Phase-Shifting Circuit magnitude and phase errors for all phase states are presented
Fig. 14(a) shows the measurement setup of the proposed in Fig. 15. The rms magnitude and phase errors are around
phase-shifting circuit. The phase-shifting circuit was tested 0.1 dB and 0.3°, respectively. High phase precision and
3168 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 7, JULY 2019

Fig. 15. RMS magnitude and phase error.

Fig. 14. (a) Measurement setup of the phase-shifting circuit, (b) measured
phase-shifting with raw 12-bit DAC code, (c) measured magnitude variation
across 10-bit phase code, (d) relative phase and phase error with 10-bit phase
code, and (e) relative phase versus frequency.

low-magnitude variation are achieved by the 10-bit phase-

shifting circuit at 28-GHz band.

IV. P HASED A RRAY OTA C ALIBRATION

AND M EASUREMENT
Fig. 16 shows the photographs of the fabricated 28-GHz
eight-element phased array. The circuit area of the phased
array is 155 mm × 130 mm. The phased array contains eight
millimeter-wave front ends and eight phase-shifting units at the
top side. The demonstrated array is a transmitter array. In the
current version, the low-noise amplifiers are not included in
the millimeter-wave front ends. Nevertheless, the results of this
transmitter array can also illustrate the effectiveness of the pro-
posed LO phase-shifting architecture. An eight-way in-phase
Fig. 16. Photographs of the fabricated millimeter-wave phased array. (a) Top
view. (b) Bottom view. (c) Antenna array.
Wilkinson power splitter network is used for 12.6-GHz LO
distribution. The IF power splitter/combiner network is at the
bottom layer of the printed circuit board (PCB). At the bottom
side are the control circuit and power management circuit.
The control circuit consists of an FPGA-based phase LUT
YANG et al.: LO PHASE SHIFTING AND HARMONIC MIXING-BASED HIGH-PRECISION PHASED ARRAY 3169

Fig. 17. Measured (a) gain, (b) OP1dB, and saturated output power.

Fig. 19. (a) Measured phase origin deviation. (b) Measured beam pattern in
normal direction.

represents the excitation incorporating magnitude and phase at

each element, r n and r’ are element position and field position,
respectively. For |r n − r  |  D, D being the aperture of the
array, we have the following approximation:

|r 1 − r  |−1 ≈ |r 2 − r  |−1 ≈ · · · ≈ |r N − r  |−1 . (14)

For an eight-element array with half-wavelength element spac-

ing at the 28-GHz band, the magnitude difference of 1/|r n −r  |
Fig. 18. OTA calibration and measurement environment. is less than 0.04 dB when the link is larger than 1 m. For sim-
plicity, a normalized field point response can be represented by
an inner product of the excitation vector J and the normalized
and eight 12-bit control DACs. Fig. 16(c) shows the eight- air interface response vector h
element antenna array. This antenna array is based on our
earlier work in [33]. Fig. 17 shows the measured gain and E norm = J, h (15)
output power. The measured gain from the IF input to the RF
output (exclusive of the splitter loss) is 25 dB. The measured where J = [ J1 , J2 , . . . , JN ]T , and
OP1dB and saturated output power are 26 and 28.5 dBm, ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤
h1 exp(− j k0|r 1 − r  |)
respectively. The measured results are in good agreement with ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
the simulated results. As shown in Fig. 18, a 1-m wireless link h = ⎣ ... ⎦ = ⎣ ..
. ⎦. (16)
is built for the OTA calibration and measurement of the 5G hN exp(− j k0|r N − r  |)
millimeter-wave phased array in a millimeter-wave anechoic
chamber. A standard horn antenna is placed at the normal The channel response can be estimated by theoretical calcu-
direction of the phased array as the probe antenna. lation or simulation. The multiple measurements with a single-
probe antenna can be formulated as
A. Fast OTA Calibration With Single-Probe Antenna ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ T⎤
E norm,1 J1
For a millimeter-wave phased array, initial phase origin ⎢ E norm,2 ⎥ ⎢ JT ⎥
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ 2⎥
deviation may exist and need to be calibrated. In this design, Enorm = ⎢ .. ⎥ = ⎢ .. ⎥ h = WXh (17)
⎣ . ⎦ ⎣ . ⎦
the initial phase origin differences can be easily corrected by
applying an offset phase address for each element. The phase E norm,M JTM
⎡ ⎤⎡ ⎤
origin deviation is estimated and aligned by using an OTA W11 W12 ··· W1N ξ1 0 ··· 0
⎢ W21 W22 W2N ⎥⎢0 ξ2 0 ⎥
calibration process. ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥
WX = ⎢ . .. .. ⎥ ⎢ .. .. .. ⎥
The radiated field of an array is the summation of the ⎣ .. . . ⎦⎣ . . . ⎦
fields of individual elements. For an N-element uniform linear
W M1 W M2 ··· WM N 0 0 ··· ξN
array of identical elements, the radiated field can be expressed
(18)
as [34]

N
exp(− j k0|r n − r  |) where W is the phase precoding matrix, and X is the initial
E(r  ) = Eele Jn (13) origin deviation matrix of elements. In order to calibrate the
|r n − r  |
n=1 phase origin deviation, the simplest way is to use the identity
where Eele is the normalized radiation pattern of the antenna matrix as the precoding matrix (W = I) in the OTA calibration
element, the complex coefficient Jn (for n = 1, 2, . . . , N) process. It means that the element is individually activated in
3170 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 7, JULY 2019

Fig. 20. Measured beam patterns for the phased array at 27.75–28.25 GHz at beam pointing (a) −40°. (b) 0°. (c) 40°.

Fig. 21. Measured (a) beam patterns at 28 GHz with the orthogonal precoding of 8 × 8 DFT matrix, (b) fine beamforming resolution with 1° beam pointing
step, and (c) normalized channel gain response and EIRP at 10-dB backoff.

sequence. Thus, (17) becomes
⎡ ⎤
h 1 ξ1
⎢ .. ⎥
Enorm = ⎣ . ⎦.
h N ξN
The correction phase offset is calculated by
Poffset = arg(h) − arg(Enorm ).
A VNA and an auxiliary upconverter /downconverter are
used for the OTA calibration of the eight-element phased array.
A host computer is used to control the phased array and read
the VNA. For the eight-element array, the calibration process
contains eight time slots. As described earlier, the element is
activated individually in sequence. In each time slot, only one
phase-shifting channel is turned on. In this OTA calibration
scheme, only eight times of measurements are required.
Fig. 19(a) shows the measured phase origin deviations
before and after the fast OTA calibration. As shown
in Fig. 19(b), good beam pattern is achieved after the OTA
calibration. The effectiveness of this OTA calibration scheme
is verified by the measured results of the radiation patterns.
B. OTA Performance Measurements
The radio performance of the phased array was also evalu-
ated OTA interface. First, the beamforming performance was
tested using a rotating platform and a VNA in the anechoic
chamber.
Fig. 20(a)–(c) presents the measured beam patterns at
(19) 27.25–28.25 GHz with the beam direction at −40°, 0°, and
40°, respectively. The measured beam patterns exhibit good
consistency in 500-MHz bandwidth. A slight deflection of the
beam is caused by the different wavelength at each frequency.
(20) The measured half-power beamwidth at normal direction is
11° in the H -plane with the sidelobe level less than −12 dB.
The measured results are in good agreement with simulations.
Fig. 21(a) shows the measured beam patterns with the
orthogonal beamforming precoding of 8 × 8 DFT matrix. The
measured beams keep good orthogonality and the beam null-
area rejection level is more than 22 dB. The measured results
also show that the beam steering range of this phased array
is more than ±50°. Fig. 21(b) shows the measured results
of beamforming with 1° beam pointing step. Fine beamform-
ing resolution is achieved by using linear phase precoding.
Fig. 21(c) shows the measured channel gain response and the
effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) at 10-dB backoff.
The measured gain fluctuation is less than 1.8 dB over 1-GHz
bandwidth and the linear EIRP is around 41 dBm. These
results show that a modulation signal with up to 1-GHz
bandwidth can be supported by the phased array.
Second, the OTA RF performance measurements were per-
formed. At the OTA RF performance measurements, the beam
YANG et al.: LO PHASE SHIFTING AND HARMONIC MIXING-BASED HIGH-PRECISION PHASED ARRAY 3171

Fig. 22. Measured (a) signal spectrum, (b) ACPR at 10-dB backoff, and (c) constellation and EVM at 15-dBm output power per element.

TABLE II
C OMPARISON OF S TATE - OF - THE -A RT 5G M ILLIMETER -WAVE P HASED A RRAY

of the phased array is pointed at the probe horn antenna.
An orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) sig-
nal with QAM-64 modulation scheme and 500-MHz band-
width is generated and applied to the phased array for OTA
measurements. The OFDM symbol consists of 2048 sub-
carriers with a subcarrier spacing of 270 kHz. The cyclic-
prefix length is one-eighth of the OFDM symbol length. Only
1824 subcarriers are used. Fig. 22(a) shows the received
signal spectrum at the probe antenna. The carrier frequency
is 27.954 GHz. Fig. 22(b) shows the measured ACPR, which
are −45 and −48 dBc at the lower side and upper side,
respectively. The linear output power is around 15 dBm per
channel at 10-dB backoff and the EIRP of this array is
41 dBm at this moment. The received signal is downconverted
to the IF carrier frequency of 2.754 GHz for error vector
magnitude (EVM) measurements. The signal is sampled by
a high-speed digital oscilloscope and then analyzed in the
signal analysis software. The measured signal constellations
are shown in Fig. 22(c) and the measured EVM value is 1.72%.
The corresponding data rate is 2.954 Gbps.
C. State-of-the-Art Comparison
A comparison between the proposed 28-GHz eight-element
phased array and state-of-the-art 5G millimeter-wave phased
array is given in Table II. Compared with these phased arrays
3172 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 7, JULY 2019
at the integrated circuit level, this PCB-level phased array
has the highest OP1dB and Psat per element at Ka-band, but
high element power consumption. This phased array achieves
high linear EIRP with less elements. The achieved EIRP
of this eight-element array is comparable to the EIRP of
the 32-element array in [14]. Moreover, this phased array
has high-phase resolution with low-rms phase error and low-
rms magnitude variation. The phase-shifting performance is
comparable with the latest integrated phased array in [23].
The achieved 10-bit phase resolution is far superior to the
6-bit phase shifter in existing works. With the 0.1-dB low-
rms magnitude variation performance, high precoding accu-
racy can be offered, and fine beamforming resolution is also
achieved. Compared with other phased array, this paper also
has good modulation quality for wideband signals. Compared
to IC-level RF phase-shifting-based phased arrays in [15], [18],
and [19], the proposed LO phase-shifting architectures have
a slightly lower Tx peak efficiency but is higher than the
LO phase-shifting-based work in [23]. Compared with these
phased arrays at the integrated circuit level, this PCB level
phased array occupies large circuit area. Overall, the proposed
LO phase-shifting architecture exhibits good phase-shifting
performance, although the PCB technology has lower process-
ing precision at the millimeter-wave frequency. This phased
array architecture will be a promising millimeter-wave phased
array solution to be integrated into the IC level in the future.
V. C ONCLUSION
This paper presented an LO phase-shifting-based eight-
element phased array for 5G millimeter-wave communications.
This phased array is operated at 28-GHz band and 2.754-GHz
IF carrier frequency. The LO phase-shifting approach and
subharmonic technique are employed to achieve up to 10-bit
phase-shifting resolution with 0.3° rms phase error and 0.1-dB
rms magnitude variation. A fast OTA phased array calibration
with a single-probe antenna is also proposed. With the high
precision phase-shifting circuit, good beamforming perfor-
mance is achieved. The phased array achieves +/−50° beam-
scanning angle and fine beam resolution less than 1° step. The
gain flatness of the phased array is less than +/−1 dB at 1-GHz
bandwidth. The measured results also show that this phased
array has high EIRP and good signal quality at 500-MHz
OFDM QAM-64 signal. This design is very suitable for 5G
millimeter-wave communications. By using multiple phased
subarray and multiple digitized IF channels, an HBF architec-
ture can be formed to support multiple streams. In addition,
this phased array architecture can be easily extended to larger
arrays.
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Binqi Yang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in information engineering from Southeast Univer-
sity, Nanjing, China, in 2013 and 2015, respec-
tively, where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree in electromagnetic field and microwave
technology.
In 2013, he joined the State Key Laboratory of
Millimeter Waves, Southeast University. His current
research interests include planar filters, millimeter-
wave antennas, microwave and millimeter-wave
circuits and transceiver systems, beam-forming net-
works, and phased arrays for mobile communications.
Zhiqiang Yu (M’13) received the B.S. degree from
the Nanjing University of Science and Technology,
Nanjing, China, in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree from
Southeast University, Nanjing, in 2013.
From 2002 to 2007, he was a member of the
research staff involved with airborne radar trans-
mitters with the Nanjing Institute of Electronics of
CETC, Nanjing. He is currently a Lecturer with
the School of Information Science and Engineering,
Southeast University. His current research interests
include microwave and millimeter-wave circuit and
system design.
3173
Ruoqiao Zhang received the B.S. degree in electri-
cal engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing,
China, in 2014, where he is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree in electromagnetic field and microwave
technology.
His current research interests include tunable
circuit components, active antenna array systems,
microwave and millimeter-wave transceiver sys-
tems, beamforming networks, and phased arrays for
mobile communication.
Jianyi Zhou (M’05) received the B.S.E.E.,
M.S.E.E., and Ph.D. degrees from Southeast Uni-
versity, Nanjing, China, in 1993, 1996, and 2001,
respectively.
In 1996, he joined the Faculty of the Department
of Radio Engineering, Southeast University, as an
Assistant Professor and became a Lecturer in 1998,
an Associate Professor in 2001, and a Professor
in 2005. His current research interests include RF
circuits and systems in mobile communications.
Wei Hong (M’92–SM’07–F’12) received the B.S.
degree in radio engineering from the University
of Information Engineering, Zhengzhou, China,
in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in radio
engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing,
China, in 1985 and 1988, respectively.
Since 1988, he has been with the State Key Lab-
oratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University,
and has served as the Director of the laboratory since
2003. He is currently a Professor and the Dean of
the School of Information Science and Engineering,
Southeast University. In 1993 and from 1995 to 1998, he was a short-term
Visiting Scholar with the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley,
CA, USA, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA,
USA. He has authored or co-authored over 200 technical publications and
authored 2 books. His current research interests include numerical methods for
electromagnetic problems, millimeter-wave theory and technology, antennas,
electromagnetic scattering, and RF technology for mobile communications.
Dr. Hong was a recipient of the First-Class Science and Technology Progress
Prize (three times) of the Ministry of Education of China and the Jiangsu
Province Government, China, and the Foundations for China Distinguished
Young Investigators and for the Innovation Group of the NSF of China. He is
currently the Vice President of the Microwave Society and Antenna Society of
the CIE, the Chair of the IEEE MTT/AP/EMC Joint Nanjing Chapter, and an
AdCom member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society. He
served as the Associate Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON M ICROWAVE
T HEORY AND T ECHNIQUES from 2007 to 2010 and as the Guest Editor for
the “5G Special Issue” of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON A NTENNAS AND
P ROPAGATION in 2017.