Abstract

This paper is intended to give an insight in the development of PHEMT multifunction MMICs (MFC) in the millimetre wave frequency range. It applies to the fast growing Multipoint video Distribution System (MVDS) market, offering a five-chip solution for the subscriber transceivers. The focus is on the local oscillator, the up-converter and the down converters at 40GHz. These two last chips include a balanced mixer, a buffer amplifier for the local oscillator and a low noise amplifier used either as a LNA (for Rx) or as a transmit driver (for Tx). The design was oriented toward low chip-size in order to reach the cost requirement for such systems. Results are shown from a demonstrator assembly built with these five MMICs.