SAW correlators on GaN

摘要

Conventional acoustic wave correlators are known for their small size (nearly 105 times smaller than an analogous electromagnetic correlator), zero DC power consumption, and linearity. Reconfigurable orthogonally coded correlators could be used at the front-end of a RF transmit and receive chain to provide cross-correlation properties that can aide in simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) systems. Loss, however, has been a significant limiting factor, even on high coupling substrates. The 2-dimensional electron gas (2-DEG) hetrostructure region on a GaN wafer can be depleted to generate acoustic gain via the acoustoelectric effect, thus allowing for long correlator structures that can be easily integrated into a front GaN MMIC. In this work the feasibility of SAW correlators on GaN was investigated.