Development of a Ka-band communication receiver front-end and its noise analysis

A Ka-band SSB communication receiver front-end is developed. The front-end consists of a balanced fin-line MMIC mixer, a local oscillator stabilized by a high Q cavity, a band-pass filter, and an IF amplifier and isolators. The total noise figure 10-11dB has been measured. In the paper, various factors effecting system noise figure are analyzed and probable methods that improve receiver sensitivity are given.