A LEO SATCOM TRX Front-End Using CMOS and D-mode GaAs Processes with Current Reuse, Enabling All Positive Biases

This work explores the use of current reuse in a heterogenous TRX (transceiver) using a 65nm CMOS technology and a 0.1µm D-Mode GaAs technology to remove the need of negative biases and to exploit the benefits of current reuse, such as lower PDC dissipation and to possibly simplify packaging. With this configuration, this TRX achieves competitive performance against other state-of-the-art works. The TX achieves measured S21 25.2dB, max. PAE of 21.8% and PSAT of 15.9dBm at 20GHz while the RX achieves S21 of 12.5dB and NF of 3.4dB with PDC of 30mW at 29GHz. Measurements with modulated signals show that the RX is able to support a 400MBaud 256-APSK signal at 29GHz and the TX achieves, with the same signal at 20GHz, EVM of -28.2dB with POUT,AVE of 4.2dBm. To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first work using current reuse techniques across different technologies.