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Abstract

An embodiment of the present invention provides an apparatus, comprising a multi-tiered cascaded tunable dielectric phase shifter capable of operating in digital-analog regime by at least one cascade operable in an analog regime and at least one cascade operable in a digital regime. The multi-tiered cascaded tunable dielectric phase shifter may be a three tiered cascaded digital-analog phase shifter using broadside coupled lines with resonance terminations containing tunable dielectric film capacitors. The first two cascades of the three tiered cascades may be operable in a digital regime, and the third cascade may be operable in an analog regime and further the digital regime may operate at (0.degree./180.degree. and 0.degree./90.degree.) and the analog regime may operate between (0.degree./90.degree.), wherein the analog cascade may provide phase states from 0.degree. up to .phi.N-1 and may add the continuous phase shift functionality to the digital cascades of the phase shifter. Also, the tunable dielectric phase shifter may be capable of providing a continuous 360.degree. phase shift with 5% bandwidth and insertion loss of approximately 3 dB without modulation. An embodiment of the present invention provides that a phase shift by the tunable dielectric phase shifter may be enabled by one or more voltage tunable dielectric capacitors which comprises a low loss tunable dielectric material and metallic electrodes with predetermined shape, size, and distance.

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First Claim