A 37-43.5 GHz front-end MMIC for 5G high-performance channel emulator in 0.1 m GaAs pHEMT

A front-end MMIC working at 37-43.5 GHz for 5G high-performance channel emulator is presented in this paper. The chip is fabricated in a 0.1-mu m commercial GaAs pHEMT process and integrated with a passive star mixer and a local oscillator (LO) chain, which is composed of a frequency tripler, a bandpass filter, a power amplifier, and an LO filter. The 10.5 GHz intermediate frequency (IF) signal is upconverted with the high frequency LO signal of 48-54 GHz through a passive double-balanced star mixer, which can output 37-43.5 GHz radiofrequency signal. The high frequency LO can avoid the increase of bit error rate caused by the frequency band of input signal covering IF frequency. The conversion gain of -11.2 to -9.7 dB, the OP1-dB of -0.26 to 1.7 dBm are achieved and the front-end chip occupies an area of 2.78 x 0.9 mm(2).