The project will enable flexible use of the highest performance active devices such as PHEMT and HBT GaAs or InP by means of a novel chip-on-chip (COC) flip-chip integration technique. The project will include design; manufacture and test of one integrated circuit each for transmit and receive sides, with each chip providing amplification, phase shifting, signal power routing and control logic. The chip will be manufactured in an advanced silicon on sapphire (SOS) technology called Ultra Thin Silicon (UTSi) CMOS. By flip-chipping GaAs or InP transistors onto the UTSi device (which will contain all passive matching circuits along with active current and temperature control circuits), the highest available performance can be achieved in a monolithic structure. Choice of CMOS on sapphire is necessary to keep high performance passive devices at the 10-20 GHz frequencies typically used in phased array antennae. Use of a commercially established CMOS on sapphire process ensures that the devices will be highly manufacturable (which is necessary for the large number of antenna elements required for all applications) and that the performance and cost constraints of both commercial and military requirements will be met.
Benefits: The significance of this project is that projected high volume applications of phased array antennae for both commercial and military uses in both satellite and aerospace applications require easy-to-implement systems based on highly integrated TRAMs. High levels of integration have proven value in computing and digital signal processing functions, but RF and IF functions have not previously been integrated because of isolation and substrate issues in most IC technologies. Therefore, this project not only will solve the need for a low cost, miniature phased array transmit/receive antenna module, it will also demonstrate a single chip device capability which could be applied to other high frequency systems and to higher frequency TRAMs when deeper submicron UTSi CMOS is developed.
Keywords: Phased-Arrays, Radiation-Hardened, Low-Cost, transmit-receive modules, SOI
