The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is a major arena for testing cosmological theories. Its discovery confirmed the hot-bigbang origin of the universe and ruled out the steady-state theory. Since that time the impact on cosmology of CMB studies has grown steadily, indicating the prevalence of non-baryonic matter and the existence of a negative pressure component in the 1980’s; the d...

While many useful tools for pursuing process control exist, little has been written to guide manufacturing organizations in using these tools to realize process control on a facility wide basis; Consequently, many organizations fail to realize significant process improvement despite repeated attempts. To fill this gap, a methodology for guiding process driven manufacturing organizations in inst...

Novel monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit source-impedance tuners for use in on-wafer noise-parameter measurement systems are reported, which can be incorporated into a wafer probe tip. These eliminate the effect of cable and probe losses on the magnitude of a reflection coefficient that can be presented to the input of an on-wafer test device, thus enabling higher magnitudes to be synthesi...

Wire bonds are one of the most common interconnects used in microelectronics; however, their application to millimeter wave monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) may severely decrease overall system performance due transmission loss, radiation and impedance mismatch. The goal this work was optimize a wire-bonded patch antenna minimize losses maximize gain frequency range from 81 83 G...

-A new direct conversion wide band (23 GHz – 31 GHz) six-port millimetre wave receiver for QPSK communications suitable for integrated circuit fabrication is proposed, to satisfy mass-market wireless communications. The receiver contains one multi-chip module consisting of a wide-band six-port junction, four RF detectors (diodes), video amplifiers and I&Q decoder. The prototype circuits are fab...

This paper presents an overview of recent state of the art technologies and future trends in millimeter-wave MMIC packaging in the aspects of low cost, high productivity and high functionality. Developments of ceramic packages up to W-band have been progressed by design innovation. LTCC Technology with thick film printing has realized low-cost packages and 60GHz-band antenna integrated MCMs. Mu...

This paper presents a new negative resistance (NR) network which is designed to compensate losses in a distributed amplifier (CDA). The byproduct of the new NR network in the CDA is significant improvement of bandwidth (~20%). The simplicity of the NR network makes it amenable to MMIC technology and for other applications too.

This paper describes latest RF Automated Test Equipment (RF ATE) technologies that include device under test (DUT) connections, a calibration method, and an RF test module mainly focusing on low cost of test (COT). Most important respect for low COT is how achieve a number of simultaneous measurements and short test time as well as a plain calibration. We realized these respects by a newly prop...

This paper reports the design of a Ka-band Equilateral triangular patch antenna (ETPA) fabricated using postCMOS and post-MMIC compatible process technology. The antenna uses an air-cavity underneath the patch radiator that is supported on thin dielectric membrane. The antenna structure was analysed and optimised using the finite element method (FEM) based Agilent High Frequency Structure Simul...

Abstract In this paper, two high efficiency monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) are demonstrated using NANOTAM's in-house Ka -band fabrication technology. AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with 0.2 ${\rm \mu}$ m gate lengths characterized, and an output power density of 2.9 W/mm is achieved at 35 GHz. A three-stage driver amplifier MMIC designed, which has a measured gain higher than 19.3 dB across ...