A COMPACT X-BAND RECEIVER FRONT-END MODULE BASED ON LOW TEMPERATURE CO-FIRED CERAMIC TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

This letter presents a compact low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) receiver front-end module integrating 9 building blocks. The receiver is a twice-frequency-conversion front-end module with image rejection, works at X-band, consists of an X-band embedded image rejection band-pass filter (BPF), an L- band multilayer image rejection quasi-ellipitc BPF, two monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) low noise amplifiers (LNAs), two intermediate frequency (IF) amplifiers, two mixers, a IF BPF, and some lumped passive components. All MMICs are mounted into pre- making cavities in the three layers LTCC substrate of the top surface, and the interconnection between MMICs and surface microstrip-line is established by bond wires. A multilayer five-pole Chebyshev interdigital BPF is developed as the first image rejection filter, and a four-pole quasi-elliptic BPF composed of stepped-impedance hairpin resonator and miniaturized hairpin resonators that can be coupled through the apertures on the common ground plane is proposed for as the second image rejection filter. The developed X-band receiver front-end module is fabricated using twenty layers LTCC dielectric substrate, which has a compact size of 30 × 20 × 20 mm 3 (including the metal cavity). The measured receiver gain and noise figure are more than 32 dB and less than 4 dB, respectively. The first and second image rejection is better than 28 dB and 40 dB, respectively. Compared with conventional receiver front-end module using hybrid microwave integrated circuit (HMIC) technology, the proposed receiver module not only has compact size, but also has good performance.