Abstract

Future communications satellites will require an order of magnitude improvement in the cost/performance of microwave/analog/digital device technologies in order to meet the needs of universal telephony access, computer networking, tele-imaging, telecommuting, videoconferencing, and high-speed Internet. Microwave and millimeter wave technologies for ultra-low noise amplifiers, high efficiency power amplifiers and high-speed analog/digital circuits capable of operating at multi-gigabits per second are being developed to meet this demand. An overview of the status and issues related to these development efforts is presented.