Mimix Broadband, Inc. has introduced a gallium arsenide (GaAs) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) 13/15-GHz chipset that consists of a highly integrated image reject receiver and transmitter, and compact, two-stage power amplifier. The image reject mixers eliminate the need for an image bandpass filter after the amplifier to remove thermal noise at the image frequency. The devices use 0.15-micron gate-length GaAs pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMT) device model technology.

This 3-chip solution targets wireless communications applications such as millimeter-wave point-to-point radio, local multipoint distribution services (LMDS), SATCOM and VSAT applications.

The receiver uses an image reject resistive ‘cold fet’ fundamental mixer to provide wide bandwidth and excellent intermodulation performance. Plus, an image reject balanced mixer is used in the transmitter, or upconverter, to minimize spurious and ease filtering requirements before the upconverted signal is fed to the compact single-ended PA. Linearity is suitable for the high-order QAM modulation required in new radios to maximize spectrum usage. The useful bandwidth of the receiver and transmitter is 10 to 18 GHz, flat from 11 to 17 GHz, so they cover the commercial 13 and 15 GHz bands and intermediate satellite bands.

Mimix performs 100% on-wafer RF and DC testing on these products, as well as 100% visual inspection to MIL-STD-883 method 2010. The chips also have surface passivation to protect and provide rugged parts with backside via holes and gold metallization to allow either a conductive epoxy or eutectic solder die attach process.

Engineering samples are available today from stock.