Abstract

This paper presents a new simple design of an integrated driver using a multilevel MMIC technology that can be used to operate a NRZ (No Return to Zero of digits) two, four or eight phase shift keying direct modulator. It can be fed by any digital signals featuring any low level (VOutput Low) between 0 V and 0.5 V and a high level (VOutput High) between 2.5 V and 8 V. It therefore provides a full compatibility with most usual logic families. An MMIC featuring a K-band (17.5 to 21.5 GHz) Bi-Phase Shift Keying modulator (BPSK) along with the proposed driver has been designed. The measured performances are : 6° maximum phase error and 1.1 dB maximum amplitude error over the full 4 GHz bandwidth.