X-Band Receiver Front-End Chip in Silicon Germanium Technology

This paper reports a demonstration of X-band receiver RF front-end components and the integrated chipset implemented in 0.18 mum silicon germanium (SiGe) technology. The system architecture consists of a single down conversion from X-band at the input to S-band at the intermediate frequency (IF) output. The microwave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) includes an X-band low noise amplifier, lead-lag splitter, balanced amplifiers, double balanced mixer, absorptive filter, and an IF amplifier. The integrated chip achieved greater than 30 dB of gain and less than 6 dB of noise figure.