Q-Band CMOS Transmitter System-on-Chip for Protected Satellite Communication

This paper reports the first fully integrated millimeter-wave CMOS transmitter system-on-chip (SoC) for protected communication enabling next generation terminals. A 200MHz DDR digital baseband input drives a complex frequency translator with sub-Hz frequency hopping resolution via an on-chip numerically controlled oscillator (NCO). Two 12b RZ DACs and quadrature modulator form a single-side band (SSB) up-converter achieving >30dB spur rejection. An RF up-converter with a X2 multiplier drives a 24dBm Q-band CMOS stacked power amplifier. The SoC was demonstrated in a current AEHF terminal and achieved 5X lower power consumption and size.