Abstract-Practical time delay circuits do not have a perfectly linear phase-frequency characteristic. When these delay circuits are applied in a phased-array system, this frequency dependency shows up as a frequency dependent beam direction (“beam squinting”). This paper quantifies beam squinting for a linear one-dimensional phased array with equally spaced antenna elements. The analysis is based on a (frequency-dependent) linear approximation of the phase transfer function of the delay circuit. The resulting relation turns out to be invariant for cascaded cells. Also a method is presented to design time-delay circuits to meet a maximum phased-array beam squinting requirement.
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