INTEGRATED PHASE-SHIFTING-AND-COMBINING CIRCUITRY TO SUPPORT MULTIPLE ANTENNAS

摘要

The disclosed embodiments generally relate to techniques for processing signals received from multiple antennas. Some disclose embodiments include an integrated phase-shifting-and-combining circuit that applies a specified phase shift to the input signals, and combines the phase-shifted input signals to produce an output signal. The integrated phase-shifting-and-combining circuit can use a current-steering mechanism to perform the phase-shifting-and-combining operations. This current-steering mechanism operates by converting the input signals into associated currents, and then steering each of the associated currents through multiple pathways which have different delays. Next, the currents from the multiple pathways for the associated currents are combined to produce the output signal. While steering each of the associated currents through multiple pathways to achieve different phase shifts, complementary impedance changes through the multiple pathways cause the aggregate impedance at the output to remain substantially constant.