A current-switching phase shifter for millimeter-wave applications

A method for realizing a phase shifter by employing switching transistors and transmission lines is proposed. The presented current switching phase shifter performs phase shifting by steering a current source to appropriate position on a transmission line. A 60-GHz phase shifter is implemented on a 65-nm CMOS technology using this method. The phase shifter can provide four quadrature phases for input signals in the frequency range from 57 to 66 GHz. The phase shifter introduces a maximum insertion loss of less than 3 dB and a noise figure from 4.3 to 6.1 dB, by post-layout simulation. The IIP3 is 1.2 dBm and the power consumption is 9 mW from a 1.5 V power supply.