Ka-band Integrated Transmitter for SATCOM

This paper presents a direct conversion transmitter integrated circuit (IC) implemented in 0.13um SiGe BiCMOS, targeting Ka-band satellite communications. The IC is comprised of an active IQ baseband filter with adjustable cutoff frequency 90 - 720MHz, IQ up-converter with gain control and local oscillator (LO) leakage compensation, LO generation network, variable gain power amplifier and auxiliary blocks. The chip uses 8 - 11GHz external LO and delivers 14dBm saturated output power (Psat) in the frequency range 26 - 31GHz, with a gain control dynamic range of 54dB and 15dB full gain. The occupied silicon area is 4mm
2
and the power consumption 547mW from 2.6V.