A Two-Channel Ku-Band BiCMOS Digital Beam-Forming Receiver for Polarization-Agile Phased-Array Applications

摘要

A 15GHz two-channel receiver is presented for digital beam-forming applications. The receiver is based on a dual-down-conversion architecture for interference mitigation and results in a channel gain (I and Q paths) of 47.1dB centered at 15GHz, with an instantaneous bandwidth of 170MHz. A 2-bit gain control (0-16dB) is also provided at the IF stage. The measured NF is 3.1dB and is independent of the gain state. The measured OP1dB is -11dBm and the input P1dB is -57 to -41dBm depending on the gain, and is ideal for satellite applications. The channel-to-channel coupling is ＜-48dB. The chip is built using a 0.18-μm SiGe BiCMOS process, has ESD protection diodes on the RF and DC pads, consumes 70mA per channel from a 3.3V power supply and is 2.6×2.2mm{sup}2, including all pads. To our knowledge, this is the first high-performance Ku-band beam-forming chip in SiGe BiCMOS technology.