Design And Application Of Millimeter Wave MMIC Driver

With the rapid development of wireless communication,millimeter wave frequency band integrated circuit has become the current research hotspot.The millimeter wave driver is an important building block of the transceiver system,which is designed to drive the power amplifier.In this thesis,a Ka band driver amplifier using 0.15 um pHEMT process has been studied.Based on the proposed MMIC driver,the amplifier module has also been developed and the applicated into a W band transceiver system.Based on the analysis of MMIC process and amplifier structure,this thesis presents the principle,design,simulation,test and application of the driver amplifier.The transistor size,amplifier structure and matching circuit are analyzed in detail.The three-stage amplifier structure is utilized for better gain bandwidth and impedance matching.All the matching network including the spiral inductors has been demonstrated using electromagnetic simulation tools.Finally,the circuits has been designed and optimized.The MMIC driver is fabricated using 0.15 um WIN PP15-51 process.The chip is measured using the on-chip measurement setup.The measured operation frequency of the amplifier is 24.5 to 31.5 GHz with the gain of better than 20dB and the output P1dB of over 22dBm.The test results are consistent with the simulation results.The amplifier module based on the driver is also designed and demonstrated.Finally,this driver amplifier module is applied to the 94GHz receiver system for the LO/3 driving.