| Phased arrays based on the coupled oscillator theory are a promising solution to cost-effective phase generation and beam steering. Coupled oscillator phased arrays have a compact circuit architecture and a simple control circuitry, compared with the conventional phased arrays. In order to achieve successful engineering designs, a comprehensive study of coupled oscillator arrays is made in this dissertation. The study is supported by an improved analysis of coupled oscillator arrays and several experimental results.; Both the discrete model and the continuum model for the coupled oscillator arrays are carefully derived. An inter-element coupling analysis is made for various coupling setups of coupled oscillator arrays. The phase error in coupled oscillator phased arrays, caused by the random free-running frequency distribution, is described through a statistical analysis. It is found that the beam-pointing error in a coupled oscillator phased array behaves in a different way from that in a conventional phased array. Phase error reduction techniques are proposed to control the phase error. Experimental two-dimensional arrays are designed to demonstrate a multi-layer array architecture for the development of practical coupled oscillator phased arrays. The dissertation also presents some designs for improving the beam-steering performance of a coupled oscillator phased array, including frequency mixing/multiplication and phase-noise reduction techniques. Experimental and simulation results confirmed the viability of the above designs. |
