QV band receiver converter for satellite communications

A QV band receiver and converter unit, including a novel low noise MMIC amplifier at 50GHz, is being developed under a Contract with the European Space Agency. This project is aimed both at the development of the basic building blocks for equipments operating in QV band (LNA and Down converters), and at the fabrication of a full receiver prototype, conceived for future satellite communication in this frequency band. At the present status of the project, the LNA and mixer MMIC´s have been designed, fabricated and tested showing excellent results, suitable for the application. The LNA features a noise figure of 2.0dB at 50 GHz, while the Mixer performs an insertion loss of 9dB.