A 12 GHz 22 dB-Gain-Control SiGe Bipolar VGA With 2° Phase-Shift Variation

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

A 12 GHz VGA showing a gain variation range from -9 dB to 13 dB with a linear-in-dB gain control feature is presented in this work. As the gain is changed, the phase shift over the entire 10-14.4 GHz bandwidth varies as little as ≤ 2° due to a compensation circuitry that reduces the input-output phase shift sensitivity to gain variations in a robust manner with respect to temperature changes. Such a reduced phase shift variation is particularly useful to simplify the signal phase/amplitude control for the various paths of a phased array system, and allows to implement ultra-low sidelobe phased arrays. The VGA prototypes, implemented in a SiGe bipolar technology, show a noise figure of 5.1 dB, an IIP3 of -3 dBm, a P1dBof -17 dBm, and a power consumption of 83 mW.