Weston Sapia
Senior RF Applications Engineer
Integrated beam-former ICs (BFICSs) are making it easier to design planar RF front ends for phased array radar systems. The appeal of a design where RF electronics and patch antennas are located on opposite sides of the same PCB is obvious. While BFICs and integrated TR modules can ease layout challenges, the task is still far from trivial due to the physical bounds imposed by the lattice spacing of lambda over two. On the simulation side, large element counts challenge traditional approaches and require improved speed and accuracy of modeling.
Using real-world design and simulation examples, this webcast will focus on challenges such as RF amplifier biasing and sequencing, circuit layout, thermal management, power management, part-to-part performance variations and calibration. The webcast will also highlight how Analog Devices’ hardware and Keysight’s Pathwave design software can simplify and de-risk the prototyping process.
Attendees will learn:
- A brief introduction to pulsed phased array radar and how this application impacts the design of planar RF Front Ends
- Practical challenges of RF design of a phased array front end including power management and sequencing, channel to channel matching and thermal management
- The capabilities of Keysight Pathwave design software for phased array modeling and characterization
- Measured performance of a X/Ku radar front end development kit
