Fully Integrated Passive Front-End Solutions for a V-band LTCC Wireless System

A novel topology implementing a 3-D fully integrated filter and antenna function is proposed as a system-on-package (SOP) compact front-end solution for the low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) based V-band modules. A 4-pole quasi-elliptic bandpass filter composed of four open loop resonators has been developed. It exhibits an insertion loss <3.5 dB, a return loss >15 dB over the pass band (~3.4 GHz) and a 3 dB bandwidth of about 5.46% (~3.4 GHz) at the center frequency of 62.3 GHz. In addition, a series fed 1 4 linear antenna array of four microstrip patches exhibiting high gain and fan-beam radiation pattern has been designed. Its 10 dB bandwidth is experimentally validated to be 55.4-66.8 GHz (~18.5%). The above proposed designs have been combined together, leading to the complete integration of passives with a high level of selectivity over the band of interest. The excellent overall performance of the integrated solution is verified through a 10-dB bandwidth of 4.8 GHz (59.2-64 GHz) and a return loss >10.5 dB over the passband.