An X-Band AlGaN/GaN MMIC Receiver Front-End

This letter presents an integrated AlGaN/GaN X-band receiver front-end. This is to the authors knowledge the first published results of an integrated AlGaN/GaN MMIC receiver front-end. The receiver uses an integrated SPDT switch to reduce size, weight and cost compared to circulator based transceiver front-ends. The integrated front-end has more than 13 dB of gain and a noise figure of 3.5 dB at 11 GHz.

I. Introduction

The aluminum gallium nitride/gallium nitride (AlGaN/GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) is an excellent candidate for high power and robust radar transceivers. This is due to its high power density, high breakdown voltage, high linearity, and high efficiency [1]. The AlGaN/GaN HEMT has also shown good low noise performance together with high survivability [2], [3]. The possibility to fabricate a high power device side by side with a low noise device on the same wafer permits for new solutions in the design of radar transceivers. This allows fully integrated transceiver front-ends to be realized in AlGaN/GaN MMIC technology. A multi-chip AlGaN/GaN radar transceiver was presented in [4]. The transceiver showed promising system performance results and all the RF circuits except the circulator were fabricated using AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. It has been shown that high power amplifiers, low noise amplifiers, switches and mixers are possible to fabricate within the same AlGaN/GaN MMIC process [5].