Development Of A Miniaturization And Multichannel Ka-band Transceiver Front-ends

As the key components of many millimeter wave systems, such as communicationsystem, battlefield identification system, radar system, precision guided system etc, theKa-band transceiver front-end already got widely used. There are growing trends ofmodule integration, light miniaturization, and multiple channels.The primary contents of this work are included as follow:1) According to the airborne system requirements such as module function,operating range and equipment weight, a high quality multichannel and lightminiaturized Ka band transceiver front-end was developed based on harmonicmixing theory. Key technology breakthroughs as dedicated two-port Ka bandquarter-mixer networks design, low-loss multichannel switches design andminiaturization have been made.2) A new double pole double throw (DPDT) switching chip was designed withthe shunt PIN diode based on the circuit simulation, the electromagneticsimulation and the collaborative-simulation of the passive electromagneticfield and the device model. A low-loss Ka-band multichannel switchingnetwork was realized with this new DPDT switching chip and the commercialsingle pole double throw (SPDT) switch chip.3) A dedicated fourth-harmonic mixer networks realized by componentsintegrated on substrate Duroid5880including microstrip diplexer, localoscillator (LO) amplifier, compact microstrip resonant cell (CMRC) LOlow-pass filter and quarter-mixer based on circuit and electromagnetic (EM)integrated simulation. Microstrip diplexer is designed to satisfy interfacerequirement, which was realized by CMRC intermediate frequency (IF)low-pass filter and cross-coupling LO band-pass filter. LO amplifier andCMRC LO low-pass filter were employed in order to satisfy the specificationof input LO signal level range from0dBm to6dBm.4) The miniature integration of the transceiver front-end was realized based on the3D Compound-Integrated Model, with the circuit planar-integrated such as the special two-port fourth-harmonic mixer, microstrip filter, monolithicmicrowave integrated circuit (MMIC) amplifier and MMIC switch, with thethree-dimensional structure layout of monolayer radio frequency (RF) circuit,multilayer low frequency circuit and multilayer component layer, with somesimple mature manufacture methods compound-integrated such as Si-base,soft substrate, ceramic film, printed circuit board (PCB) and etc.5) There were40sets of miniaturization and multichannel Ka-band transceiverfront-ends manufactured and tested. All technique requirements were satisfiedunder conditions of temperature range from-40℃to+70℃. The keyspecifications of the transceiver front-ends were show as follows at roomtemperature:a) Output power≥30dBm.b) Noise figure≤4.5dB.c) Weight≤260g.d) Volume:68.0mm*47.0mm*21.0mm.