Advancing millimeter-wave circuits for Radio Astronomy
Kaijie Ding defended his PhD thesis at the Department of Electrical Engineering on March 15th.
Taking into account the system analysis and the measurement results of the 3 prototype chips, the PhD research of Kaijie Ding demonstrates the potential, advantages, and feasibility of the mm-wave inter-satellite communications for OLFAR. The prototype chips are showing state-of-the-art performance.
This thesis studies the feasibility of establishing millimeter-wave inter-satellite links for the system of Orbiting Low Frequency Antennas for Radio Astronomy (OLFAR). The millimeter-wave band with broad bandwidth allows quality improvements of the generated sky picture. The thesis includes both system-level considerations and circuit-level studies.
Based on the system-level considerations, phased array systems operating at 23 GHz and 60 GHz are proposed. Link budget calculations, system specifications, beamforming architectures, and semiconductor technologies under radiation are also discussed and analyzed.
Improving the circuit performance
The circuit-level studies explore design techniques in transceiver front-end modules, aiming to improve power efficiency and noise figure for maximizing link budget, as well as to reduce the chip area for minimizing cost. To verify the proposed design techniques, three prototype chips have been fabricated: a 23-GHz TX front-end in 130-nm SiGe process, a 23-GHz TX/LNA front-end in 130-nm SiGe process, and a 60-GHz TX front-end in 28-nm CMOS process.
Title of PhD thesis: Millimeter-Wave System and Front-End Circuits for Inter-Satellite Communications. Supervisors: Dr. Vojkan Vidojkovic, Prof. Mark Bentum and Dr. Dusan Milosevic.