A Silicon-Germanium single chip receiver for S-band phased array radars

A Silicon-Germanium single chip receiver has been developed for S-band phased array radars with 2-D digital beamforming. The complete receiver chain from the S-band RF input up to the low-IF output has been integrated on a single SiGe chip. The only external components required to complete the receiver are an RF limiter for protection against high input power from the antenna element, high-IF bandpass filters and an A/D-converter. This paper describes the design of the single chip receiver and provides some experimental results obtained with packaged chips on test boards.