Abstract

GaAs MMICs mixers and oscillators have been fabricated for application to VHF-UHF and satellite TV tuners using a 0.7 mm gate length MESFET process available in the Philips Microwave Limeil Foundry, in France. Various mixer configurations have been evaluated which show improved intermodulation/noise figure performance as compared to silicon bipolar circuits. Best circuits have input IP3 over 10 dBm with associated noise figure lower than 10 dB at 2 GHz. The oscillators tested are the multivibrator-type and common gate Clapp differential configurations. Although the fully integrated GaAs VCO's do not meet the phase noise requirements yet, GaAs VCO's coupled to an external hybrid resonator appear however as a good solution to achieve low phase noise wide band VCO's at frequencies higher than 2 GHz.