A Heterodyne Transceiver for Hybrid-Integrated K-/Ka-Band Phased Arrays

This paper presents a heterodyne transceiver capable of driving a hybrid-integrated shared-aperture phased array with up to 64 dual-polarized transmit (Tx) and 32 dual-polarized receive (Rx) antenna elements. It performs frequency conversion between K-/Ka- and L-band for both the Tx and the Rx signals, provides adequate input power levels to the Tx beamformer front-ends, and enables a low receiver noise figure in full-duplex operation. The work deals in detail with cross-couplings between both signal paths and the resulting interference of the transmit signals in the receiver circuits. This is particularly important for the proposed hybrid integration approach, as transceiver and phased array front-ends are connected through a single dual-band waveguide feed network. The manufactured demonstrator performs well in terms of matching, gain, and noise performance.