диафрагмированные волноводные фильтры / 3ed4da74-2cf7-444d-a5b8-6421318b9642

3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The circuit was fabricated at the TSMC foundry with a 0.18 lm gate length and six metal layers. The chip photographed in Figure 7 was fabricated on an area of 9.7 mm2 including the TX and PLL. The board is designed by the ADS tools and the distance between the antennas is a quarter wavelength. The improved isolation of 23 dB between two input channels is achieved as shown Figure 8. The measurement results of the front-end are shown in Figure 9. The simulation and measurement results show that the front-end (LNA, mixer) can achieve a 33.5 dB voltage gain and a 3.8 dB NF when consuming 3.9 mW. The maximum output current of the regulator is 160 mA with a dropout voltage of 250 mV and the soft-start time can be controlled between 200 lS and 6.2 mS. The regulator is capable of operating from 1.9 to 3.8 V, which covers a wide range of the typical battery voltage and it has an output voltage of 1.8 V at 45 C to 85 C. The measurement results of the regulator output voltage (Vout) are shown in Figure 9. The overshoot and undershoots are smaller than 15 mV and the inrush current is approximately under 30 mA. This front-end having diversity and soft-start regulator has achieved high performance comparable with the other CMOS front-end using internal switches as shown in Table 2. Even though the NF is too high, it can be neglected due to the fact that it is compensated by the diversity gain.

4. CONCLUSIONS

This work has presented a fully integrated CMOS diversity front-end having a novel soft-start regulator suitable for wakeup system. It was designed to operate in the 2.4 GHz band and fabricated using 0.18 lm CMOS technology. Using a soft-start regulator, the battery damages are successfully protected. When compared with the other CMOS front-end, it has enhanced performance with the additions of the internal switches, the stacked inductor, and the linear regulator without increased chip area. There is no need of external switches, additional pins for switch control, and battery protection circuits. We expect that the proposed architecture play an important role for various wake-up diversity systems.

REFERENCES

1.Y.I. Kwon, T.J. Park, K.H. Hong, S.S. Lee, H.S. Kim, and H.Y. Lee, A 2.4 GHz CMOS front-end having improved antenna isolation for diversity, Proc Asia-Pac Microwave Conf 3 (2008), D2–01.

2.C.E. Capovilla, A.S.A. Tavora, and L.C. Kretly, A fully integrated 2.5 GHz band CMOS low noise amplifier with multiple switched inputs for diversity wireless communications, Microwave Optoelectron Conf (2007), 625–629.

3.K. Tsunekawa, Diversity antennas for portable telephones, Proc IEEE Veh Technol Conf (1989), 50–56.

4.X. Lai, J. Guo, W. Yu, and Y. Cao, A novel digital soft-start circuit for DC-DC switching regulator, Int Conf ASIC 2 (2005), 554–558.

5.Y. Bing, L. Xinguan, Y. Qiang, and J. Xinzhang, A novel compact soft-start circuit with internal circuitry for DC-DC converters, IEEE Int Conf ASIC (2007), 450–453.

6.Y.I. Kwon, T.J. Park, and H.Y. Lee, A low power 2.4 GHz CMOS RF front-end with temperature compensation, Proc Asia-Pac Microwave Conf 3 (2007), 1817–1820.

7.L. Lin, W.Y. Yin, J.F. Mao, and Y.Y. Wang, Implementation of new CMOS differential stacked spiral inductor for VCO design, IEEE Microwave Wireless Compon Lett 17 (2007), 727–729.

8.S.G. Lee and J.K. Choi, Current-reuse bleeding mixer, Electron Lett 36 (2000), 696–697.

VC 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A HIGHLY INTEGRATED Ka-BAND TRANSCEIVER MODULE WITH TWO CHANNELS

Zhigang Wang, Ruimin Xu, Yunchuan Guo, Yong Zhang, and Bo Yan

School of Electronic Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, People’s Republic of China; Corresponding author: zgwang@ee.uestc.edu.cn

Received 23 August 2009

ABSTRACT: A compact Ka-band square-wave modulation transceiver module with two receiving and transmitting channels is presented. This module consists of 15 monolithic microwave integrated circuits, two dielectric resonator oscillators, a E-plane waveguide filter, a coupler, two power dividers, and over 200 components, and works at two Kaband operating frequency points. The developed Ka-band transceiver module is fabricated using advanced packages techniques, which has a compact size of 120 mm 60 mm 20 mm and exhibits greater than 500 mw output power with amplitude imbalance of two output ports less than 30 mw, switch rise time and fall time less than 4 ns, isolation of transmitting two channels more than 63 dB, and voltage standing wave ratio of receiving ports better than 1.3. VC 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52: 615–618, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ mop.25005

Key words: Ka-band; square-wave modulation; E-plane waveguide filter; transceiver

1. INTRODUCTION

With tremendous growth of radars, electronic antagonism technologies and wireless communications, realization of low manufacturing cost, excellent performance, and high level of integration for transmitter and receiver modules or transceiver modules has become increasingly important. Numerous publications [1–4] have dealt with the development of front-end modules.

In Ref. 4, a Ka-band transceiver module is presented simply. In this article, the module is recommended detailedly, also including design of E-plane waveguide filter. This module has two receiving channels, two transmitting channels, and a local oscillator (LO) chain, and is composed of two dielectric resonator oscillators (DROs, X-band), E-plane waveguide filter, coupler, power dividers, over 200 components and 15 monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), which include one mixer, one frequency multiplier, one low noise amplifier, five amplifiers, and seven switches. Advanced package techniques have been applied to this transceiver module. Using these advanced package techniques and MMIC technologies, many complex functions can fit into a compact housing and make this transceiver module more feasible to insert into a system. Finally, the transceiver module is integrated in a 120 mm 60 mm 20 mm metal housing, also exhibits excellent performances.

2. MODULE ARCHITECTURE

The block diagram of the transceiver module is shown in Figure 1. This module is typically composed of frequency multiplier, switch, low noise amplifier, mixer, drive/power amplifier, and other lumped components. According to the system blue print, the transceiver module is used to achieve special performances, Some of which are as follows: for transmitting channels, Phase noise is better than 75 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset, RF output

power is greater than 500 mw, amplitude imbalance between two channels is less than 40 mw, Fundamental wave and harmonic wave suppression is better than 60 dBc, Switching on–off ratio is larger than 60 dBc, Separation between two transmitting channels is more than 60 dB; for receiving channels, noise figure, and voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of receiving ports are lower than 11 dB and 1.3, respectively, Switching on–off ratio is larger than 40 dBc; for transmitting and receiving channels, Switch rise time (trise, from 10–90%) and fall time (tfall, from 90–10%) are less than 4 ns, and delay between applying the digital control input and output switching on and off (ton and toff) are lower than 40 ns.

According to these requirements, some researches should be completed, such as the transceiver module feature, architecture, and frequency plan. When getting the required Ka-band signals, spurious suppression is needed; to achieve compact configuration of the transceiver module, the number of components should be few enough for fitting into a compact housing, and some commercial chips should be used to achieve the requirements.

Two DROs are used as RF sources, which works at X-band. The RF signals of X-band are quadrupled to millimeter-wave

frequency, which are used as transmitting signals and LO signals of receiving chain. For achieving the requirement of spurious suppression, an E-plane band-pass filter based on ka-band standard rectangular waveguide is used. After the fourfold RF signals are amplified, they are divided into two ways using a parallel- coupled-line coupler, one way as LO signals directly and another way as transmitting signals. Transmitting signals amplified are separated to two ways by a power divider. To achieve module performance of output power, right driver amplifier, and power amplifier should be selected, as shown in Figure 1. The receiving channels are combined into one way by a power combiner before a low noise amplifier, for using least devices. In this scheme, the low noise amplifier selected has gain of 20 dB and noise figure of 2 dB for obtaining good noise figure performance. To achieve requirement of phase noise, DRO resources selected are very critical devices, and their phase noise should be larger than 90 dBc/Hz@10 kHz by analyzing. For achieving requirement of switching characteristics, fit switch and driver should be selected. For this transceiver module, isolation walls are critical for many performances, especially for separation of transmitting channels and Switching on–off ratio.

Figure 4 The simulated results of the E-plane waveguide band-pass filter

3. DESIGN OF E-PLANE FILTER

The filter after frequency multiplier is a key part of the module, it decide the ability of clutter suppression. In this transceiver module, an E-plane waveguide band-pass filter is selected. In the filter, the substrate printed ladder-type pattern is located in a standard rectangular waveguide, as shown in Figure 2. The filter is a transfiguration of E-plane metal inserted filter. E-plane filter has been widely employed as a cost-effective solution for low- to-moderate filter requirements. Their ease of manufacturing and availability of accurate design software have made E-plane filter widely employed in several microwave and millimeter-wave applications for over 20 years [5, 6]. The electrical performance of E-plane filters is mainly determined by the ladder-type pattern on substrate.

The E-plane filter is direct-coupled resonator filter, and consists of five half-wavelength resonators, as shown in Figure 2. The evanescent waveguide can be represented with an impedance inverter (K-inverter) circuit, as shown in Figure 3. The reactance values of Xs and Xp are functions of sizes (Wj) for an evanescent waveguide. Normalized inverter value and negative electrical length / are given by [7]

Figure 5 Photograph of the transceiver module

where Zg is wave impedance of rectangular waveguide. At the same time, the normalized inverter values for an equal-ripple band pass filter are [8]

where gi’s are the element values of Chebyshev lowpass prototype filter, FBW is the fractional bandwidth, and n is the order of the filter. The values of the K-inverters are controlled by changing sizes (Wj). By method of parameter-extraction, relationship between values of the K-inverters and Wj can be established. Based on this way, a 0.1 dB ripple five order Chebyshev band-pass filter with a 1.5 GHz bandwidth centered at 33.75 GHz is designed. A commercial full-wave 3-D FEM simulator

(Ansoft HFSS) is used to analyze and optimize the filter after the initial design. The sizes designed are listed in Table 1. Finally, microstrip-probe transitions are added at the input/ output ports of the filter for integration with other circuits, the simulated results are shown in Figure 4.

4. INTEGRATION DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT

For designing a compact housing, which accommodates all functions is shown in Figure 1, the structure design of the transceiver module is quite important, and all space will be well utilized. Through overall consideration, a standard structure is selected: both sides of housing floor are used [9]. To facilitate the efficient packaging, we put all RF circuits on the front side, while DC/Control circuits on the backside.

Because the transceiver module is composed of 15 MMICs and more than 200 components, to accommodate all these components into a compact housing is a challenge work. The integration process includes RF circuits, MMIC chips, various substrates, connectors, DC/Control circuit board, bonding, and so on. Photograph of the transceiver module is shown in Figure 5. The dimension of entire module fabricated is 120 mm 60 mm20 mm.

Through testing, all the performance requirements are satisfied. Some performances of the transceiver module at two Kaband operating frequency points are as follows: output power is greater than 500 mw; amplitude imbalance is less than 28.9 mw; Phase noise is better than 76 dBc/Hz@10 kHz; spurious suppression is better than 75 dBc; Separation of transmitting channels is more than 63 dB; Switching on–off ratio of transmitting channels and receiving channel is larger than 72 dBc and 46 dBc, respectively; ton and toff is lower than 40 ns as shown in Figure 6(a), and trise and tfall are less than 4 ns as shown in Figure 6(b); noise figure and VSWR of receiving ports are lower than 9.2 dB and 1.3, respectively.

5. CONCLUSION

In this letter, a compact, highly integrated, and superior performance transceiver module has been developed. In addition, a five-pole Chebyshev E-plane waveguide band-pass filter has been designed for clutter suppression. The transceiver module has two channels, and works at two frequency points of Kaband. The developed filter and other devices have been combined together using advanced packages techniques, leading to a highly integrated transceiver front-end module with high performance. The total transceiver front-end module has a compact size of 120 mm 60 mm 20 mm, and has superior performance: for transmitting channels, greater than 500 mw output power, switch rise time and fall time less than 4 ns, phase noise of better than 76 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset; for receiving channels, noise figure of lower than 9.2 dB.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by National Nature Science Foundation of China under Grant 60701017.

REFERENCES

1.A. Nirmalathas, C. Lim, D. Novak, D. Castleford, R. Waterhouse, and G. Smith, Millimeter-wave fiber-wireless access systems incorporating wavelength division multiplexing, Presented at Asia Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC), Dec. 2000, pp. 625–629.

2.K. Lim, S. Pinel, M.F. Davis, A. Sutono, C.H. Lee, D. Heo, A. Obatoynbo, J. Laskar, E.M. Tentzeris, and R. Tummala, RF-sys-

tem-on-package (SOP) for wireless communications, IEEE Microwave Mag, 3 (2002), 88–99.

3.Y.K.K. Chan, B.K. Chung, and H.T. Chuah, Transmitter and receiver design of an experimental airborne synthetic aperture radar sensor, Prog Electromagn Res 49 (2004), 203–218.

4.Z.G. Wang, R.M. Xu, Y.C. Guo, Y. Zhang, and B. Yan, A miniature Ka-band transceiver with two channels, Presented at Asia Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC), Hong Kong, December, 2008.

5.R. Vahldieck, J. Bornemannn, F. Arndt, D. Grauerholz, Optimized waveguide E-plane metal insert filters for millimeter wave appplicatons, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech 31 (1983), 65–69.

6.Y.C. Shih and T. Itoh, E-plane filters with finite-thickness septa, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech 31 (1983), 1009–1013.

7.G. Matthaei, L. Yong, and E.M.T. Jones, Microwave Filter, Imped- ance-Matching Networks, and Coupling Structures, Artech House, Boston, MA, 1980.

8.R. Levy, Theory of direct-coupled-cavity filters, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech 15 (1967), 340–348.

9.P.J. Meier, J.A. Calviello, Ka-band front end with monolithic, hybrid, and lumped-element IC’s, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech 34 (1986), 412–419.

VC 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE INTEGRATED PASSIVE TECHNOLOGY BY ADVANCED SI-GaAs-BASED FABRICATION FOR RF AND MICROWAVE APPLICATIONS

Cong Wang, Ji-Hoon Lee, and Nam-Young Kim

RFIC Center, Kwangwoon University, 26 Kwangwoon, Nowon, Seoul 139-701, Korea; Corresponding author: kevinhunter0414@hotmail.com

Received 28 August 2009

ABSTRACT: In this letter, an advanced SI-GaAs-based manufacturing process is presented for creating high quality, cost effective, and compact size integrated passive devices. Through this advanced process, accurate thin film resistors, high Q spiral inductors, and high yield/ breakdown voltage metal-insulator-metal capacitors can be successfully realized. VC 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52: 618–623, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.25018

Key words: integrated passive device; thin film resistor; spiral inductor; metal-insulator-metal capacitor; breakdown voltage

1. INTRODUCTION

The continuing trend towards greater miniaturization of electronic systems has increased the demand for high performance, high integration, high yield, and low cost products. Owing to the fact that integrated passive devices (IPDs) are generally fabricated using standard wafer fabrication technologies, such as thin film and photo-lithography processing, they can be manufactured with these advantages and widely used in the front end RF sections of mobile phones [1]. It is possible to integrate individual passive components into an RF device or system by IPD technology [2]. IPD technology not only offers compatibility with the existing active devices [3] but also ensures the compatibility of semiconductor processes, making it an essential technology for system in a package (SiP) and system on chip (SoC) developments that are expected to be the key next-generation system implementation approaches [4]. In mobile phone communication systems, many functional blocks, such as directional couples, baluns, and band pass filters can be realized by IPD technology [5–7].