Dynamic Beam-Stabilized, Additive-Printed Flexible Antenna Arrays with On-Chip Rapid Insight Generation

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel flexible antenna array system that combines on-chip real-time beam stabilization with additive-printed copper-based antennas, enabling shape-changing, on-the-move communication with improved accuracy and reduced costs.

Contribution

It introduces a low-cost copper ink and a CMOS-based dynamic beam stabilization processor for conformal arrays, addressing deformation-induced errors and material degradation.

Findings

Successful real-time beam correction during deformation

Use of CuMOD ink reduces costs and oxidation issues

Scalable, low-power CMOS beam stabilization architecture

Abstract

Conformal phased arrays promise shape-changing properties, multiple degrees of freedom to the scan angle, and novel applications in wearables, aerospace, defense, vehicles, and ships. However, they have suffered from two critical limitations. (1) Although most applications require on-the-move communication and sensing, prior conformal arrays have suffered from dynamic deformation-induced beam pointing errors. We introduce a Dynamic Beam-Stabilized (DBS) processor capable of beam adaptation through on-chip real-time control of fundamental gain, phase, and delay for each element. (2) Prior conformal arrays have leveraged additive printing to enhance flexibility, but conventional printable inks based on silver are expensive, and those based on copper suffer from spontaneous metal oxidation that alters trace impedance and degrades beamforming performance. We instead leverage a low-cost Copper Molecular Decomposition (CuMOD) ink with < 0.1% variation per degree C with temperature and strain and correct any residual deformity in real-time using the DBS processor. Demonstrating unified material and physical deformation correction, our CMOS DBS processor is low-power, low-area, and easily scalable due to a tile architecture, thereby ideal for on-device implementations.