Advancing silicon mm-wave transmitter ICs for satellite communications

Scaling of silicon (Si)-based volume production technologies has resulted in transmitter operating frequencies in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) region (30 GHz-300 GHz). The DARPA ELASTx program was started with a goal of leveraging the Si technologies to create watt-level linear and efficient transmitter ICs. This paper provides an overview of the program and highlights three recent notable results: a 19 dBm W-band power amplifier (PA) with power-added efficiency (PAE) of 14%, a 20.8 dBm D-band PA with PAE of 7.6%, and a fully integrated 94 GHz system-on-chip transmitter that generates 64-QAM signals with 3.9% EVM and 50 dBc ACPR at data rate of 1.05 Gbps and output power of 10 dBm. This technology has applications in low-cost satellite communications terminals such as the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) system.