Ka Band Chip-Set for Electronically Steerable Antennas

This paper presents a Ka band chipset dedicated to electronically steerable antenna systems. The first MMIC of the chipset is a multifunction chip including several amplifier stages, digitally controlled attenuator and phase shifter, a complex Transmit/Receive switching scheme and a Serial Input to Parallel Output digital circuit. The second MMIC includes a Low Noise amplifier, a Power amplifier and a Transmit/Receive switching circuitry. Both circuits present state of the art performances at frequencies above 30 GHz and allow together a huge reduction of system complexity. The circuits are fabricated using P-HEMT processes validated for Space use. Various possible architectures together with design issues and test results will be presented.