Difficulty in Designing Ka band Phase Array Antenna
>1000 Antenna on 1 PCB
Ka band phase array antenna for Low Earth Orbit Satellite requires up to thousand antenna to be designed on 1 PCB, it creates high demand for PCB flatness and results of low production yield rate.
Circuit Complexity
To support dual polarization(linear, circular) and dual beam, antenna solution need >10 layers of material, either LTCC, LCP, FR4 or PCB, to assembly RF front-end chip(PA/LNA/Beamformer) together with the multiple elements patch antenna, It results in production low yield rate and becomes obstacles to deploy Ka band user terminal.
Advantage of Scalable AIP
Scalable AIP as Standard Building Block
Scalable AIP to integrate multiple antenna on the package of multiple RF front-end chip eg. PA/LNA as a standard unit block, so antenna system designers can assembly them on a simple 6 layers main PCB without considering the complicated design of thousands patch antenna and PCB flatness.
Easy Assembly on Main PCB
4 antenna and 4 RF front-end chips are integrated as one Scalable AIP, utilizing 500um pitch BGA make the main PCB assembly easy.
Better Architecture
By using Scalable AIP, RF front-end chips close to the antenna also improves the performance, power consumption and easier polarization design.
Easy Scaling Up to Thousands Antenna
For a 1024 antenna system, just need to assembly 256 Scalable AIP on a 6 layer main PCB, main PCB only needs to manage phase control, global RF signal transmission and DC power supply.
Dual Beam and Circular Polarization Ready
Scalable AIP already built in design for 2 beam with 2 polarization (Linear, Circular), easy to support low-earth-orbit satellite connection make before break in the handover stage.