An Inline RF Power Sensor Based on Fixed Capacitive Coupling for GaAs MMIC Applications

Author

Zhiqiang Zhang ; Xiaoping Liao

Author_Institution

Key Lab. of Microeletromechanical Syst., Southeast Univ., Nanjing, China

Volume

15

Issue

2

fYear

2015

fDate

Feb. 2015

Firstpage

665

Lastpage

666

Abstract

This letter proposes an inline RF power sensor based on fixed capacitive coupling for GaAs MMIC applications. In the design, a certain percentage of the input power coupled by a beam and sensed in a thermopile sensor, where the beam is not required to release to obtain a fixed capacitance for high-power levels and increase the dynamic range. This sensor offers the compatible capability with the GaAs MMIC technology. Measured reflection and insertion losses are <;-24.2 and 0.73 dB at X-band, respectively. Experiments demonstrate that this inline sensor exhibits good linearity of the output response from 1 to 200 mW, and results in the average sensitivity of ~29.5 μV/mW at 10 GHz. The sensitivity increases with the increase of the X-band frequency, with small measurement errors.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; MMIC; capacitance measurement; capacitive sensors; electromagnetic wave reflection; gallium arsenide; losses; measurement errors; microsensors; microwave measurement; thermopiles; GaAs; MMIC applications; X-band; fixed capacitive coupling; frequency 10 GHz; inline RF power sensor; insertion loss; measurement errors; power 1 mW to 200 mW; reflection measurement; thermopile sensor; Capacitive sensors; Couplings; Gallium arsenide; Power measurement; Radio frequency; Sensitivity; Capacitive coupling; GaAs MMIC; fixed; inline; power sensor;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Sensors Journal, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1530-437X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSEN.2014.2363902

Filename

6930720