Millimeter-wave SMT low cost plastic packages for automotive RADAR at 77GHz and high data rate E-band radios

The cost of the millimeter-wave functions in the system overall price is today one of the main limiting factor for new high frequencies applications like wide band automotive RADARs or high data rate radios. A big difficulty for the new devices above 60 GHz is to be intrinsically low cost, but also to comply with simple and standard assembly techniques at the module level. This very hard challenge has already been overcome for applications below 40 GHz with low cost plastic Quad Flat No-Lead packages (QFN) in the last three years. This generation of plastic packages has strongly contributed to decrease the weight of packaging and assembly in the system's cost. It has also enabled the assembly of microwave devices on standard SMT lines achieving industrial and competitive microwave solutions. Today, the same demand exists for millimeter-wave applications. And plastic packaging solutions has to be pushed to their limits to fulfill these objectives. This paper will present new ultra-low cost packaging concepts involving plastic over-molding techniques. The realization of a 77 GHz transmitter for automotive RADAR packaged in a plastic QFN will be detailed.