Monolithic LTCC SiP transmitter for 60GHz wireless communication terminals

We demonstrate a 36 times 12 times 0.9mm³ sized compact monolithic LTCC SiP transmitter (Tx) for 60GHz-band wireless communication terminal applications. Five GaAs MMICs including mixer, driver amplifier, power amplifier and two of frequency doublers have been integrated onto LTCC multilayer circuit which embeds a stripline BPF and a microstrip patch antenna. A novel CPW-to-stripline transition has been devised integrating air-cavities to minimize the associated attenuation. The fabricated transmitter achieves an output of 9dBm at a RF frequency of 60.4GHz, an IF frequency of 2.4GHz, and a LO frequency of 58GHz. The up-conversion gain is 11.2dB; while the LO signal is suppressed below 33.4dBc, and the spurious signal is also suppressed below 27.4dBc. This is the first report on the LTCC SiP transmitter integrating both a BPF and an antenna. A 60 GHz communication was demonstrated