Front-end technology for phased-arrays with digital beamforming

Phased-arrays are widely used in the military and space domain. They are pervading the civil domain in base stations and the like and distribution of systems over a single or multiple platforms is on the way. With increased connectivity and communication between partial systems, it is less problematic to have only partial systems onboard of an individual platform, as the sensor or communication systems will be formed by the co-operating system parts. In this environment, the importance of phased-arrays will increase further, due to the following reasons. Arrays offer great advantages in terms of performance. Antenna beams can be repositioned at a speed that is unthinkable for mechanically positioned systems. For the majority of the applications, the speed of this repositioning can almost be ignored and considered real-time. Beam widths can be altered by changing hardware settings only, and again at a lightning-fast speed. Multiple independent beams can be implemented simultaneously, and the system can perform multiple functionalities due to this versatility. Arrays offer great advantages in mode of degradation. Whereas conventional systems are relying on individual amplifiers, receivers, mechanical systems etc., phased arrays have multiple receive chains, multiple amplifiers, multiple beamforming hardware etc. Hence, the failure mechanisms are entirely different for arrays. Due to the increased amount of components, one may argue that it is more likely that an individual component may fail. However, and to the contrary, the mode of degradation is very graceful for the majority of the failures, and the system continues to operate at slightly reduced performance. Arrays offer great advantages in flexibility. More degrees of freedom are introduced as the power budget can be adapted to individual beams. The array may be divided in sub-arrays dynamically, for selecting different array-sizes depending on the functionality that is instantly required. For each of these subarrays, different pulse-repetition frequencies and individually adapted dutycycles can be implemented for each of the functionalities that are required at that point in time