Over-the-Air Phase Calibration Methods for 5G mmW Antenna Array Transceivers

Calibration is essential to optimize the performance of any radio transceiver during its development and manufacturing processes. This paper proposes over-the-air (OTA) calibration methods based on measuring and calibrating the phases of phased array transceiver paths. The phase responses of each signal path with all phase shifter states were characterized using an OTA radio link in the transmission and reception modes. Scattering parameter measurements give amplitude and phase responses over the frequency range, which can be converted to the delay domain with the Fourier transform. In this paper, two new delay domain phase calibration methods are presented and compared with a previously presented frequency domain method. The best performance was achieved with the relative phase calibration method in the delay domain which uses all measurement data to find the calibration values. The other two methods, i.e., the absolute phase calibration method in the delay domain and in the frequency domain, use the average phase as the calibration value. OTA radiation pattern measurements from two prototype 5G millimeter wave transceivers were used to compare the RF performances of the calibration methods, and measurements were performed with a 100 MHz 5G new radio waveform. The radiation patterns were analyzed based on direction accuracy, power level, and side lobe level, to give a few examples. The transceiver units were calibrated using the three studied methods, and while having significantly different uncalibrated performances, after calibration, both transceivers were tuned to similar performance levels.