A Ka-band 4-Channel Beamforming Transceiver IC for Inter-Satellite Communication Systems

A 4-channel beamforming integrated circuit (IC) for inter-satellite communication systems is proposed. The IC includes power amplifiers(PA), low-noise amplifiers, (LNA) power divider, channel switches, and antenna switches. The design was developed with wafer-level chip-scale packaging (WLCSP) considerations, and the loss effects of bump pads were modeled. A input matching network for LNA was integrated within the switch, resulting in improved receiver noise figure (NF) performance. The transceiver's peak transmission efficiency was simulated to be 18.3% at 27 GHz, with a minimum 4-channel coherent NF of 4.8 dB.