Commercial satellite applications for heterojunction microelectronics technology

Future commercial satellite-based communication systems will be supporting a variety of high data-rate consumer and business applications, including universal telephony access, computer networking, teleimaging, telecommuting, videoconferencing, and high-speed Internet. In response to the anticipated system-performance requirements, heterojunction technology for ultra-low noise amplifiers (LNAs), high-efficiency power amplifiers, and high-speed analog/digital circuits capable of operating at multigigabit per second rates are being developed. An overview of the status and issues related to this development effort is presented.