MILLIMETER-WAVE GENERATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A GAAS-FET BY OPTICAL MIXING

Coherent mixing of optical radiation from a tunable CW dye laser and a stabilized He—Ne laser was used to generate millimeter-wave signals in GaAs FET’s attached to printed circuit millimeter-wave antennas. The generated signal was further down-converted to a 2 GHz IF by an antenna-coupled millimeter-wave LO at 62 GHz. Detailed characterizations of power and S/N under different bias conditions have been performed. This technique is expected to allow signal generation and frequency-response evaluation of millimeter-wave devices at frequencies as high as 100 GHz. © 1990 IEEE