Metal-Encased Boundaries Tip the Balance in Liquid Crystal Microstrip Delay Lines Phase Modulation for High-performance V-Band Wireless Links

The steadfast pursuit of wider-bandwidth telecommunication of higher data rates is driving the microwave electronics frontend to the higher frequency millimeter-wave spectrum, wherein reconfigurable components-based signal processing (e.g., phase shifters realized by liquid crystals microstrip delay lines reported in this work) require a loss-suppressed upgrade to combat the degradation in figure-of-merit (FoM). To this end, we report a strategy for FoM improvement by leveraging the device's metal packaging boundary to produce a radiation-confinement effect (with enhanced thermal stability, uniformity and structural integrity). This enhancement improves the FoM by up to 31.3° / d B and yields an average increase of 28.5° / dB within the targeted unlicensed V-band (centered at 60 GHz), thereby addressing the growing demands for bandwidth, energy efficiency, and link budget in beamforming systems. These improvements align with the stringent performance requirements of the next generation 6G networks and the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem.