Ceramic RF circuits for high volume wireless products

The case study presented in this paper describes an oscillator fabricated on a 14 x 10 mm alumina tile designed for pick and place and surface mount reflow onto an FR4 main board. This thick film hybrid, containing less than 10 parts, would typically cost very little for the materials, to manufacture, to test and to tape and reel assuming a high volume. Taking this whole approach one step further and increasing the size of the substrate to 25 x 10 mm it would then become possible to incorporate considerably more of the front end of a transceiver. Harmonic filters, receiver roofing filters, TX/RX switch, LNA, TX coupler and even the PA could be considered.