GaAs E Band Radio Chip-Set

A GaAs pHEMT radio chip-set, consisting of receiver, up-converter and power amplifier, for E-band applications demonstrates excellent conversion gain, linearity and output power over the entire 15 GHz bandwidth of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) E-band specification. The receiver's measured gain is 12 dB with an image rejection exceeding 10 dB, an IIP2 of 17 dBm and IIP3 of 5 dBm. For the up-converter, the measured conversion gain exceeds 10 dB and the OIP3 is approximately 26 dBm. The power amplifier has an average measured output power of 25.4 dBm and exceeds 24.5 dBm over the band. This amplifier has a measured small signal gain of 20 dB, OIP3 of approximately 32 dBm and the input and output return losses exceed 15 dB. The saturated output exceeds previous results for a power amplifier spanning the full 71 to 86 GHz span of the ETSI E bands for any semiconductor system. To the authors' knowledge this is the highest performance E-band full chipset solution realized in a commercially available GaAs foundry.