In-House Made Inverted Microstrip Line Phase Shifter Based on Nematic Liquid Crystal

• Published in: 2021 13th International Symposium on Antennas, Propagation and EM Theory (ISAPE) Vol. 1; pp. 1 - 3
• Main Authors: Xing, Huijuan, Fu, Yanwei, Lv, Xianyang, Peng, H., Wu, Q., Zhang, Y., Temiz, M., El-Makadema, A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-12-2021
• Subjects: Antenna measurements; Dielectrics; liquid crystal; microstrip line; Phase measurement; phase shifter; Phase shifters; Power demand; Prototypes; Voltage measurement
• ISSN: 2643-4687
• DOI: 10.1109/ISAPE54070.2021.9753429

Nematic liquid crystals are anisotropic dielectrics whose properties could be controlled by surface anchoring, exter-nal electric or magnetic fields. A typical design method of tunable inverted microstrip line phase shifter based on liquid crystal for microwave application is investigated. Two phase shifter designs based on the proposed method were introduced with the center operation frequency of 10 GHz and 20 GHz respectively. The prototype design operating at 20GHz is manufactured. The dielectric anisotropy of the liquid crystal used for the prototype is 0.45. A differential phase shift of 27.2° was achieved at 20 GHz with the physical length of 20 mm, connected to two coplanar waveguide ports of 50 ohms through vias, and under an external bias of 7 V.