X-band TR module for radar and wireless communication systems

The paper presents the design and fabrication of an X-band transmit receive module operating in the frequency range of 9.25 to 10.75 GHz. The proposed TR module consists of a circulator, a power amplifier and a low-noise amplifier, which are fabricated using hybrid microwave integrated circuit technology. Amplifier design procedures are presented with focuses on stability improvement, wideband matching and noise matching techniques to improve amplifiers' performances. The designed power amplifier with good input and output matching exhibits 15-dB power gain and provides measured output power of 15.1 dBm and OP1dB of 22.5 dBm. The designed low noise amplifier has a very low measured noise figure of 2 dB and a high gain of 20 dB over the whole bandwidth, good input/output matching is also achieved with measured S11 and S22 smaller than −10 and −12 dB, respectively. Amplifiers are integrated with circulator to build a complete TR module which helps extend operating range of radar and wireless communication systems.