In-Phase Power-Combined Frequency Triplers at 300 GHz

Abstract

International audienceWe report on the design, fabrication and characterization of a 300 GHz Schottky-diode frequency tripler made of two mirror-image integrated circuits that are power-combined in-phase in a single waveguide block using compact Y-junctions at the input and output waveguides. Each chip features six anodes on a 5 μm thick GaAs membrane. The tripler has 5-15% conversion efficiency measured across the 265-330 GHz band when driven with 50-250 mW of input power at room temperature. At 318 GHz it delivers a peak power of 26 mW with 11% conversion efficiency. The power-combined frequency multiplier is compared with a single-chip tripler designed for the same band using the same integrated circuit

A Frequency-Multiplied Source With More Than 1 mW of Power Across the 840–900-GHz Band

“…Predicted performance of the multiplier were obtained using the same method as in [28] and [29]. Our diode model was adjusted for the actual anode size (1.2 m ) and for the epilayer doping 5 10 cm .…”

“…The driver chain of the 900-GHz in-phase power-combined frequency tripler is constituted by a -band synthesizer followed by a high power power-combined -band amplifier module, and a power-combined 300-GHz frequency tripler based on [28]. The power delivered by the driver stage at 300 GHz was measured using a waveguide Erickson Instruments power meter [32] and a 1-in-long WR10-WR3 waveguide transition to match the multiplier output waveguide.…”

“…The present approach, however, is based on the concept of power combining demonstrated recently at 300 GHz [28] and on the technological heritage of the past few years in planar GaAs Schottky diode multipliers. The source that will be presented is based on a power amplifier module at -band that pumps two frequency triplers that are cascaded.…”

Design and Characterization of a W-Band Power-Combined Frequency Tripler for High-Power and Broadband Operation

“…Spatial or Quasi-optical combining is an attractive approach [11][12][13], but these systems are comparatively bulky, thus not be preferred for a compact design. Since waveguide offers a low loss channel for signal propagation, a waveguide structure has been widely adopted for power-combined frequency multiplication at millimeter or submillimeter wavelength [14][15][16][17].…”

“…In order to increase the output power while keeping its bandwidth and efficiency, an in-phase powercombined version is reported in this paper. At the input waveguide, instead of the Y-junction power divider or branch-line coupler as depicted in [15,16], a Ka-band double-probe structure is adopted to realize the waveguide to microstrip transition and power divider simultaneously, so the electrical path of fundamental signal can be shortened and the block size can be reduced significantly, which is suitable for compact configuration. At the output waveguide, a compact Y-junction combiner is utilized.…”