Recent advances in materials science have shown the possibility to employ tunable dielectric materials that have low losses (high quality factor, Q), while maintaining high voltage tunabilities, relevant for application in phased arrays. The physics behind the operation of a phased array is based on the ability to provide a phase shift to the signal that reaches each and every antenna forming the array. Phase shifters require a combination of low insertion loss and large cumulative differential phase, both of which must be attained by electronically controlling a small bias voltage variation, thus reducing the need for high power handling at the system level. Though an integrated synthesis, characterization, design and modeling Phase I effort, the proposers will demonstrate feasibility of a low-insertion loss high-performance passive phase shifter for application within the L, C, S and X bands based on engineered high Q and high tunability domain wall-based epitaxial ferroelectric thin film material.
