volume | PIER Journals

2009-07-13

Integrated Compact Broad Ka-Band Sub-Harmonic Single Sideband Up-Converter MMIC

Pramod Kumar Singhal,

Prof. Pramod Kumar Singhal

Department of Electronics Engineering

Madhav Institute of Technology & Science

India

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Sarbani Basu,

Dr. Sarbani Basu

Department of Electrical Engineering

National Cheng-Kung University

Taiwan

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Yeong-Her Wang

Prof. Yeong-Her Wang

Institute of Microelectronics, Department of Electrical Engineering

National Cheng-Kung University

Taiwan, ROC

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Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, Vol. 8, 179-194, 2009

doi:10.2528/PIERC09060807

Abstract

Design, simulation and measurement results of the integrated compact up-converter MMICs (microwave monolithic integrated circuits) are presented and discussed. The design is performed to achieve low cost and high performance transmitter system for the Ka-band frequency applications. It is designed using anti-parallel diode pair sub-harmonic single sideband mixer and three stage RF (radio frequency) amplifier. Microstrip lines and lumped elements are used together to achieve a compact chip size. The layouts of the circuits are designed with careful EM (electromagnetic) simulations to avoid inter-component couplings and effect of the microstrip bending discontinuities. The chip is operated for the wide bandwidth of the RF frequency from 22-38 GHz. Due to sub-harmonic mixing the required local oscillator frequency (LO) is reduced to half (10-19 GHz) to that of the RF frequency. The conversion gain of the chip is 9-15 dB and P-1dB output power is 7-12 dBm. The single sideband and anti-parallel diode pair suppress the in-band unwanted sideband and second harmonic of the local oscillator (2LO), respectively. The suppression of sideband and 2LO signals is typically 20-35 dB and 20-30 dB, respectively. The size of the chip is as compact as 4.2 mm² on a 100 μm-thick GaAs substrate.

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Pramod Kumar Singhal, Sarbani Basu, and Yeong-Her Wang, "Integrated Compact Broad Ka-Band Sub-Harmonic Single Sideband Up-Converter MMIC," Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, Vol. 8, 179-194, 2009.
doi:10.2528/PIERC09060807

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