Highly integrated and compact W-band front-end for radiometry application

Abstract

Using conventional 0.25pm HEMT (VLN02 process) and pseudomorphic 0.15pm HEMT (MM015 process), a highly integrated and low power consumption receiver has been developed for a W-band radiometer. All the millimeterwave functions and even the first stage of IF amplifier are fully integrated on MMIC technology according to a multifunction approach. A compact housing has been developed for chip integration. A high performance oscillator at LO sub-harmonic provides less than -93dBc/Hz at lOOliHz from carrier at 46.6GHz. The complete frontsnd assembly exhibits more than 20dB conversion gain and less than 6.5dB noise figure around 93.5GHz RF frequency and 100 to 600MHz associated IF frequency. To our knowledge this realization is the first report of a fully monolithic W-band complete front-end based on industrial HEMT technologies and dedicated to space applications.

Technology developments for a large-format heterodyne MMIC array at W-band

“…4(b). The test board measurements include the performance of the test connectors 5 which were the reference planes for these measurements. The worst-case return loss is 15 dB over the DC-20 GHz band.…”

“…However, that design was not fully integrated. Other fully integrated W-band heterodyne receiver modules have been presented in the literature [5, 6, 7, 8], but cryogenic noise data were not reported.…”

“…However, that design was not fully integrated. Other fully integrated W-band heterodyne receiver modules have been presented in the literature [5,6,7,8], but cryogenic noise data were not reported. This paper is organized as follows: the MMIC module design is presented in Section II, a description of the chipsets is given in Section II(C), the MMIC module performance is summarized in Section III, and the design and performance of the multilayer signal-routing boards are shown in Section IV along with the 4-pixel sub-array concept.…”

A completely integrated single-chip phase-locked loop with a 15 GHz VCO using 0.2 μm E-/D-HEMT-technology

“…In principle, there are two ways to generate a signal at these frequencies: Either by building a VCO in HEMT-technology [1] or by multiplying a signal typically generated in the frequency range between 12 and 25 GHz [2,3]. In FMCW radar systems, the phase noise of the oscillator heavily implies on the sensibility of the whole system.…”