This paper presents a 4×4 K-band active receive phased-array antenna-in-package (AiP) with polarization control as a unit cell for the SATCOM-on-the-Move (SOTM) user terminal downlink radio system. The proposed active AiP is modular and scalable. Over-the-air (OTA) tests are executed for the evaluation of the performance. The fabricated AiP provides 34 dB of active gain at the boresight and consumes 1.16 W of DC power when all the ports are activated. The RF channel gain and noise figure of the beamformer ICs embedded in the AiP are also estimated using the OTA test measurement results.
This paper reports a manufacturable, Periodically Polarized Piezoelectric Film (P3F) Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) resonator using Aluminum Scandium Nitride (AlScN) materials operating in overtone mode at X and Ku band. P3F BAW technology benefits from a significantly larger film thickness than the traditional BAW thickness-frequency scaling approach, enabling a manufacturable, high quality-factor (Q), and high frequency resonator technology. A P3F material stack was realized using a combination of single and polycrystalline AlScN layers with desired polarity of layers as deposited, which enables volume manufacturing. An AlScN P3F BAW resonator was manufactured using XBAW®, a unique and patented transferred substrate process technology for next generation resonator and filter solutions. The fabricated P3F BAW resonators demonstrated 2nd overtone operation at 10.7 GHz & 18 GHz, and exhibits a FoM, (Qp × kt2) of 27 and 20, respectively. This result suggests that AlScN P3F BAW using overtone mode operation enables miniature, manufacturable, BAW RF filter technology for X band and higher frequencies.
A 300-GHz-band fundamental mixer was designed and fabricated in indium phosphide (InP) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology for 6G wireless communications. To achieve a wide bandwidth, we proposed a resistive mixer with a widely split frequency matching network. The fabricated mixer IC achieved a conversion gain of -15 dB, a -3-dB RF bandwidth of 60 GHz (235-295 GHz), and a -6-dB RF bandwidth of 100 GHz (220-320 GHz), the widest ever reported. We implemented the mixer IC as a WR3.4 waveguide mixer module and used a single mixer module in the TX and in the RX in a back-to-back data transmission experiment in three different frequency bands in the range from 220 GHz to 320 GHz. Data rates of 120, 152 and 168 Gbps were achieved in the three frequency bands, with 168 Gbps being the highest data rate achieved so far by a single mixer.
We present and demonstrate a time-modulated tunable bandwidth (BW) and group-delay (GD) filter, exploring a slow-modulation operating region of N-path filters to extend the BW of conventional passive micro-acoustic filters. An array of MEMS resonators is fabricated with custom in-house ScAlN process, and heterogeneously integrated on PCB with commercial RF switches to showcase ultra-low modulation frequency, 2 to 6 % of the filter center frequency, with wide maximum BW (11.6 % with a $k_t^2 = 2.5\% $ at 430 MHz), three-fold wider than passive topologies, enabling reconfiguration while requiring no tunable passive. We show that the proposed prototype is suitable as a Self-Interference Canceler (SIC) in full-duplex scenarios, where real-time GD tunability is required. When used as an SIC, 40 dB SI cancellation within 14 % BW is achieved. Thanks to the slow-modulation approach, a 17 dBm power handling is demonstrated, along with a low −28 dBc distortion.
A polarimetric millimeter-wave radar imaging technique is proposed to remotely detect, localize, and wirelessly read a novel additively manufactured passive sensor composed of a microfluidic channel filled with liquid metal Galinstan. Very high variation of the radar-cross section of the sensor to small variations of the level of Galinstan in the channel is obtained. Indeed, at the radar-to-sensor distance of 2.4 m, the measured radar echo level of the sensor varies by 4.5 dB when the level of Galinstan changes by 1 mm. This sensitivity is higher than those previously reported in the literature for wireless and passive sensors of the same class. Moreover, the localization technique of the sensor is successfully achieved for only three false detections on 75 measurements in cluttered environments from radar-to-sensor distances up to 15 m.
