Microwave Monolithic Receiving Front-end Technology Research Key Device

A monolithic microwave integrated circuit is a microwave circuit, in which the active and passive components are fabricated on the same semiconductor substrate. Due to the advantages of small volume and weight, mass production cost is low, low parasitic, higher reliability and stability, MMICs are widely used in electronic warfare, missile guidance, phased-array radar system and other military field and also widely used in civil field, such as mobile phone, the wireless local area network and global positioning system. Microwave wave low noise amplifier and mixer are the key components of microwave wave receiver systems, its main effect is amplify the weak signal, reduce noise interference, undertake frequency conversion, provide the information data to the system to modulate or demodulate. Based on the process of UMS GaAs PH15/25, this paper designs some single receiving front-end unit devices, of which the broadband distributed amplifier through the process of PH15realize production,and the fourth harmonic image rejection mixer is realized by PH25process. This paper mainly studies the contents are as follows:(1) Based on the process of PH25, a Ka band two stage low noise amplifier is designed and completed. As the frequency range of33-37GHz, the LNA achieves a gain more than14dB, a noisefigure of less than2.5dB and input/output return loss better than14dB.(2) Based on the process of PH15, an ultra-wideband distributed amplifier is designed and completed. The cascade topology is used in this design.The test results show that as the frequency range of16～40GHz, the LNA achieves a gain more than6dB, input/output return loss better than5dB.The average noise figure is about5dB at the frequency range of15～26.5GHz. The chip size is1.5×1mm2(3) A34GHz～36GHz monolithic fourth-harmonic image rejection mixer (FHIRM) is designed base on0.25um GaAs pHEMT MMIC technology. The length of the coupling line of the dual balun is reduced by about80%after shunting two lumped capacitors at each end. The total sizes of the balun is reduced ulteriorly with a novel topology is used. The measured results exhibit that the conversion loss of the mixer is less20.5dB, the image rejection ratio is more than20dB in the frequency range of34GHz-36GHz for500MHz,1GHz and1.5GHz IF frequencies. The measured isolation of4LO-to-RF is better than38dB.(4) A Ka-band (32GHz-40GHz) single-chip receiver front-end is designed based on0.15um GaAs pHEMT MMIC technology. The simulation results show that, the conversion gain of the receiver front-end over the RF frequency band is above12dB for50MHz to5GHz IF frequencies and the DSB noise figure is less than3dB.