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The introduction of a compact switching architecture in the design of a monolithic microwave integrated voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is described, that is able to provide enhanced characteristics in term of both linearity and tunability. The proposed solution is applied to the design of a C-band GaAs MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuit) VCO. The chip has been realised with the heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) HB20M technology process provided by UMS Foundry. Measurements show a relative tuning range of about 30%, an average sensitivity of about 83 MHz/V, a minimum output power of 11.4 dBm and a phase noise at 100 kHz of frequency offset from the carrier lower of −107 dBc/Hz.

A QV band receiver and converter unit, including a novel low noise MMIC amplifier at 50GHz, is being developed under a Contract with the European Space Agency. This project is aimed both at the development of the basic building blocks for equipments operating in QV band (LNA and Down converters), and at the fabrication of a full receiver prototype, conceived for future satellite communication in this frequency band. At the present status of the project, the LNA and mixer MMIC's have been designed, fabricated and tested showing excellent results, suitable for the application. The LNA features a noise figure of 2.0dB at 50 GHz, while the Mixer performs an insertion loss of 9dB

An extremely compact Q-band three-conductors balun is presented. The proposed structure exploits the increased line-to-line coupling to improve bandwidth and impedance transformation. Furthermore the insertion of open-ended stubs makes the circuit suitable for EHF mixer application. The balun operates in the 38–50 GHz range with a typical 1-dB amplitude error and 108 phase unbalance

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