Design of a front-end of a Ku-band transceiver based on LTCC technology

In this paper, we present design, analysis and simulation of a front-end of a transceiver which works in Ku-band (15.5GHz) based on multi-layer LTCC (low temperature co-fire ceramic) technology. The superheterodyne structure is selected and some GaAs bare chips from Hittite company such as mixer, power amplifier, LNA, drive amplifier are used in this MCM (multi-chip module). Some considerations about the system design are considered first, by the simulation of the system we can got the following results: NF<3.5dB, Gain>26dB, Sensitivity about −80dBm. Most of the passive devices including filters, power dividers, transmission lines, impedance matching network are integrated in the LTCC substrate. The active devices are mounted on the surface of LTCC substrate. The entire module is achieved with 15-layer LTCC substrate and the area is about 50mm*30mm.