Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik

HL 88: GHz Dielectrics - Materials for mobile communication II (DF with DY/HL/MM)

HL 88.4: Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2015, 16:10–16:30, EB 407

Continuously tuneable, high performance phase shifters based on liquid crystal for applications in phased array antennas — •Matthias Jost, Christian Weickhmann, and Rolf Jakoby — Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Merckstr. 25, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany

During the last decade, calamitic-nematic liquid crystals (LCs), well-known from the LC-display technology (LCD), have become increasingly popular in the field of microwave engineering. Due to their unique property of exhibiting local anisotropy, they offer the possibility of realising passive, continuously tuneable devices, such as phase shifters, tuneable filters, polarisers or matching networks. LC can be oriented continuously between the two extreme states (parallel or perpendicular to an applied RF field), either by applying a magneto-static or an electro-static field. Depending on the orientation of the LC, its permittivity and dielectric loss changes. This work presents the recent progress of our research in the topic of hollow waveguide based LC phase shifters for application in phased array antennas. This kind of phase shifter is suitable for high performance applications due to its high figure of merit (FoM), defined by the ratio of the maximum differential phase shift over the highest insertion loss in all tuning states. Full wave simulation results as well as measurement results of realised phase shifters will be shown and a perspective of a phased array antenna for satellite communication will be given.