3.5 GHz 寬頻金氧半數位相移器研發

Fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication systems are expected to achieve a 10-fold increase in transmission data rate, a 1,000-fold increase in capacity, a 3-fold increase in spectral efficiencies, and a 10-fold decrease in latency. Such significant enhancements can be achieved with several key techniques, such as massive MIMO, beamforming, and beam tracking. Therefore, development of phased array transceiver for 5G mobile communication system application is one of the most motivated studies in industry and academic. Phase shifter and variable gain amplifier (VGA) are the key components of the phased array transceiver for beamforming system. The phase shifter provides the phase difference requirement for each RF path of phased array transceiver. By adjusting the phase of the phase shifter of each RF path, we can determine the direction of the output beam. Nevertheless, when the phase shifter provides different phase-shifting states, the loss will be different for each state. Consequently, a VGA have to be added to provide different gain compensation for different phase-shifting states. Nevertheless, the gain tuning of the VGA will introduce additional phase variations for the whole phased-array system. Hence, the VGA have to achieve sufficient variable gain range while maintaining low phase error. Furthermore, a simple digital control mechanism is in demand for system integration. The project will work with ITRI to develop 3.5 GHz wideband, low insertion loss, low phase error and digital control phase shifter and variable gain amplifier integrated circuit for the next generation 5G mobile communication. The phase shifter and variable gain amplifier will be designed and fabricated using 65 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit process.