Inkjet-Printed Two-Dimensional Phased-Array Antenna on a Flexible Substrate

摘要

In this letter, we present a two-dimensional 2-bit 4 $,times,$4 phased-array antenna on a flexible Kapton substrate fabricated using inkjet printing. Printed carbon nanotube thin-film transistors (CNT-TFTs) form the switching elements in the phase-shifting network. A multilayer interconnection scheme has been utilized to fully package the subsystem and enable convenient access of the control lines to the 64 CNT-TFTs. By appropriately controlling the on and off states of the TFT switches using a computer mainframe, beam steering of a 5-GHz RF signal at four steering angles of $theta = 0^{circ},$ $varphi = 0^{circ};$ $theta = 14.5^{circ},$ $varphi = 0^{circ};$ $theta = 20.7^{circ},$ $varphi = -45^{circ}$ ; and $theta = 34^{circ},$ $varphi = -26.5^{circ}$ are experimentally demonstrated. The insertion loss and the power consumption by the switch array are measured to be 8.17 dB and 11.2 mW, respectively .