GaAs MMIC chipset for 17/18 GHz indoor radio LANs

The design, fabrication and measurement of a transceiver chipset for 17/18 GHz indoor radio LANs are presented. The transmitter employs direct carrier modulation and comprises a VCO and M-ary PSK modulator in one chip and a separate HPA/preamplifier chip. The receiver is a single-chip downconverter with a LNA, VCO, mixer and IF amplifier. The receiver has 18.5+1.5 dB conversion gain and a noise figure of 4.1 dB. The HPA shows good linearity with saturated output power of 23dBm, which is appropriate for indoor requirements at 17/18 GHz. The chips were fabricated using the GMMT (Caswell) F20 MESFET foundry process.