Switching dual-band reconfigurable microwave amplifiers for flexible communication systems.

摘要

he convergence of information, ideas and people in today's modern world lends itself largely to the evolution of modern communication systems. With the drive for rapid and efficient integration of competing communication standards comes the need for development of innovative circuits required to build innovative communication systems hardware; this hardware being the backbone of integrated communication systems. This dissertation involves the development of switchable dual-band reconfigurable microwave amplifiers for application to flexible communication systems. The predominant benefit of this achievement is reduction of the system cost, power consumption, size and weight of mobile, wireless, and satellite communication systems. A novel design technique for developing reconfigurable microwave power amplifiers is explored, based on developments of more traditional amplifier designs and Transmit/Receive (T/R) module switching technology. First, a monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) based dual-band reconfigurable power amplifier was developed in the Triquint 0.5-um MESFET foundry process using two independent power amplifiers operating at 5.5 GHz (C-band) and 8.5 GHz (X-band) controlled by a high performance Radio Frequency (RF) switch. The output power achieved by the C-band and X-band MMIC power amplifiers was 12-dBm and 11-dBm, respectively for approximately 0-dBm of input power. The broadband RF switch achieved an insertion loss of between 1.2- and 1.5-dB, with port-to-port isolation of better than 25dB. Next, a Microwave Integrated Circuit (MIC) reconfigurable low-noise amplifier (LNA) was developed based on the switching reconfigurable architecture of the MMIC power amplifier, though implemented as a printed circuit board (PCB) design. The MIC reconfigurable LNA utilizes two independent amplifiers operating at L-band and S-band, which are selected independently using a MIC RF switch. Both the L-band and S-band amplifiers achieved a gain of 18-dB and noise figure of 2-dB. The broadband RF switch achieved an insertion loss of 4dB and switch-to-switch isolation of 13.7dB for switch