A 4Rx, 4Tx Ka-band transceiver in 40nm bulk CMOS technology for satellite terminal applications

Abstract

This paper presents a K/Ka-band transceiver for phased array satellite mobile ground terminal applications. The transceiver integrates four receiver (Rx) RF paths operating at 17∼21GHz and the four transmitter (Tx) RF paths operating at 27∼30GHz, each with independent 0.5dB gain and 5-bit phase control to support analog RF beamforming. Each Rx RF path is summed in an integrated passive combiner before an IQ frequency down conversion stage driven with a LO frequency doubler. Each Tx RF path is driven from an integrated IQ modulator clocked with an LO frequency tripler with an active power splitter. The Rx and Tx baseband (BB)/IF paths consist of 325MHz wide IQ VGAs and filtering to support up to 650MHz instantaneous bandwidth. The transceiver achieves 3.3dB NF and +10dBm output power per RF path in Rx and Tx modes respectively, whilst consuming 200mW in 4RF+BB Rx mode and 500mW in BB+4RF Tx mode. It is fabricated in 40nm bulk CMOS and occupies 10.7mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> .