The receiver is just a few square millimetre and is suitable for new safety systems, image sensors, and radio communication for high bitrates. The receiver is an electronic circuit including antenna, low noise amplifier, and frequency converter monolithically integrated on gallium arsenide.
"This is a breakthrough in our research. Our result opens the possibility to manufacture systems for very high frequencies within the so called 'THZ-electronics' area, to a relatively low cost. In the next phase of this project even more functions can be integrated on the same chip", according to Herbert Zirath, professor at the department of Microwave Electronics.
This circuit can be used, for instance, in radiometer systems in future safety systems looking for concealed weapons without personal intrusive search. Other applications for this circuit are imaging sensors that can look through darkness, smoke or fog. This is an important safety function for vehicles such as cars and aircrafts.
"Thanks to this technology, we now have the possibility of integrating imaging sensors by using circuits of a few square millimetre which is much smaller that the present technology at a lower cost. For automotive applications such as cars, aircrafts and satellites, the size and weight is of utmost importance. The present systems consist of many pieces and demands several cubic decimetres volume", says Herbert Zirath.
The new circuit is designed to work at the frequency of 220 gigahertz, but this is not an upper limit. According to professor Zirath, the technology can be used up to and above 300GHz in a near future.
The technology is also interesting for wireless data communication because, due to the very high bandwidth, data rate well above 10 Gbit/s is possible to realize in future radio links. Together with Omnisys Instruments in Gothenburg, we are also implementing receivers for future earth observation satellites for environmental studies and weather forecasts at frequencies 118 and 183 GHz, using the same technology.
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Pentek released its Model 7141 Dual Multiband Transceiver with FPGA. It is a complete software radio system for connection to HF or IF ports of a communications system. The device's signal-to-noise ratio and the spurious free dynamic range are improved by 10 dB, when compared to many competitive products, according to the company. It accepts two full scale analog HF or IF inputs on front-panel MMCX connectors at +10 dBm into 50 ohms with transformer coupling into Linear Technology’s LTC2255 14-bit 125 MHz A/D converters. A/D output samples are delivered into the Virtex-II Pro FPGA for signal processing or for routing to other module resources. A TI/Graychip GC4016 quad digital downconverter accepts either four 14-bit inputs or three 16-bit digital inputs from the FPGA, which determines the source of GC4016 input data. These sources include the A/D converters, FPGA signal processing engines, SDRAM delay memory and data sources on the PCI bus. Each GC4016 channel may be set for independent tuning frequency and bandwidth. A TI DAC5686 digital upconverter (DUC) and dual D/A accepts baseband real or complex data streams from the FPGA with signal bandwidths up to 40 MHz. When operating as an upconverter, it interpolates and translates real or complex baseband input signals to any IF center frequency between DC and 160 MHz. It provides real or quadrature (I+Q) analog outputs through two 320 MHz, 16-bit D/A converters to two front-panel MMCX connectors at +4 dBm into 50 ohms. The Xilinx XC2VP50 Virtex-II Pro FPGA serves as a control and status engine with data and programming interfaces to each of the on-board resources including the A/D converters, GC4016 digital downconverter, digital upconverter and D/A converters.
