A Compact Ka-Band Active Integrated Antenna With a GaAs Amplifier in a Ceramic Package

Abstract

This letter presents the design of a Ka-band active integrated antenna in package (AIAiP). A monolithic microwave integrated circuit amplifier based on the GaAs process and a compact patch antenna based on the printed circuit board process are implemented, respectively. Then, the amplifier and antenna are assembled together in a specified package using the wire-bond process. Thus, compared to the traditional solutions, the transmission loss and the size of the proposed AIAiP are significantly reduced. Furthermore, the influence of the bonding wire and the package is taken into account in the design of the amplifier and the antenna, respectively. A good agreement between the simulation and measurement results can be observed. The proposed AIAiP occupies a compact size of 7 × 7 mm 2. Meanwhile, it achieves −10-dB impedance bandwidth from 33.4 to 37.2 GHz and a peak gain of 18.9 dBi at 35 GHz. Additionally, the impact of the package size on the antenna performance has been demonstrated for future AIA designers. Index Terms-Active integrated antenna (AIA), antenna in package, GaAs amplifier. I. INTRODUCTION A CTIVE integrated antenna (AIA) refers to the antenna integrated with one or more active solid-state devices. The AIA has received considerable interest due to its advantages in low loss and compact size, and is much more suitable for the phased-array antenna systems [1], [2]. Several kinds of AIAs

Highly Integrated PA-PIFA With a Wide Frequency Tuning Range

“…Table II compares this work with other PAIAs. Among them, the works in [7] and [12], as well as the type II in [16], have separate OMNs, and others are seamlessly integrated. The results in [16] show that PAIA employing direct matching can effectively reduce loss and enhance overall performance.…”

“…Conventional, PAIA is achieved by closely cascading the power amplifiers (PAs) and antennas (after matching to 50 Ω separately) or designing an impedance transformer network to match PA antenna [7]- [12]. However, these methods cannot eliminate the passive impedance matching network, which still restricts the size reduction and performance improvement, in terms of loss and parasitic radiation elimination.…”

Solving Sub-Wavelength Lattice Reduction in Full-Metal Front-Ends for Dual-Polarized Active Antennas

“…Such limitations have greater impact as the frequency of operation increases. Additionally, their avoidance is even more justified in the context of AAs, due to the DC-to-RF efficiency of solidstate amplifiers in the Ku-band and above, which is still below 50% [18], [19].…”

Co-Design and Validation Approach for Beam-Steerable Phased Arrays of Active Antenna Elements With Integrated Power Amplifiers

“…This approach is, however, not well suited for higher frequencies, due to the increasing power losses of matching circuits and harmonic filters introduced between the PAs and antennas. To overcome this problem, direct impedance matching between the PA and radiating element can be used, as was demonstrated in [7], [8] for PCB-based designs and [9] for the antenna-in-package architecture. Monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) is a popular alternative, offering compact design and high repeatability (see [10], [11]).…”