Techniques, systems and architectures for generating desired phase shifts in a phased array to control the directions of radiation in a wide range of angles are disclosed. Particularly, phased array architectures based on novel PLL-coupled phase shifting techniques for implementation in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) and sub-terahertz (sub-THz) operations range are described. In one aspect, a phased array including an array of unit cells is disclosed. In some embodiments, each unit cell in the array of unit cells includes a dual-nested PLL that is configured to effectuate phase locking and frequency locking to a reference signal from an adjacent unit cell. Moreover, each PLL includes control circuitry that can generate a wide range of phase shifts between adjacent unit cells to facilitate phased-array operations. Note that using the dual-nested PLL to generate a desired phase shift between adjacent radiating elements eliminates the use of conventional lossy phase shifters in the phased array.