Highly Integrated MMIC Chipset for Ku-Band Satellite Transponder

摘要

This paper presents the architecture, design and measured results of high performance GaAs MMIC chipset for Ku-band satellite payload. Chipset is designed with the objective to achieve best performance with minimum number of highly integrated MMICs and minimum off-chip components. Chipset contains Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), Double Balanced resistive PHEMT mixer (DBM), Variable Gain Amplifier (VGA) and Amplifier with 4-bit digital attenuator. MMICs are realized using 0.2μm GaAs PHEMT process. Key features of these circuits are low noise, excellent gain flatness, LO harmonic rejection and good linearity with gain control. In design, special attention was given to unconditional stability and good matching. This makes all MMICs cascadable, which eliminates isolators in system design. These MMICs reduce complexity and cost of satellite onboard subsystems and provide an ultra miniature, three-chip all MMIC solution to satellite on board receiver design. The three-chip receiver achieves 55dB gain with 1.6dB Noise figure in 13.5GHz-15GHz frequency band. MMIC chips are designed for two standard packages with chip size 2.6mm × 1.6mm and 2.6mm × 2.0mm.