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Design of a KA-Band Image Rejection Sub-Harmonic Down-Converter MMIC

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Abstract

A Ka band image rejection sub-harmonic down-converter monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) is proposed. It contains a radio frequency (RF) amplifier, a broadband Lange coupler and two balanced mixers with two compact Marchand Baluns. The converter is fabricated by a commercial GaAs 0.2 μm pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMT) process, the size of which is 1.5 mm × 2 mm. Moreover, an improved nonlinear stability analysis method is presented in this paper. Based on the auxiliary generator (AG) technology, the method can analyze the nonlinear stability of circuits under the terminal impedance mismatched condition by setting the terminal load impedances as optimized variables. This method is applied to the sub-harmonic down-converter and is validated by the simulation and experiment. Experimental results show that from 30 GHz to 40 GHz, the conversion loss (CL) of the converter is less than 10 dB, and the image refection ratio (IMRR) is more than 15 dB.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank for financial support of the program for Chinese new century excellent talents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microwave Center, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 610054, China

    Yu Liu, Tao Yang & Ziqiang Yang

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  1. Yu Liu
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  2. Tao Yang
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  3. Ziqiang Yang
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Correspondence to Yu Liu.

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Liu, Y., Yang, T. & Yang, Z. Design of a KA-Band Image Rejection Sub-Harmonic Down-Converter MMIC. J Infrared Milli Terahz Waves 31, 1469–1477 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-010-9726-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-010-9726-9

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