Development of a MMIC chip set and a MMCM for cellular communication

Simultaneous communication with multiple subscribers is achieved in certain base stations topologies by utilizing several receive chain sections for each of the antennas. Due to the large number of receive modules in such topologies, modules must be low cost and small size. On the other hand, base stations receive line-ups, are very demanding on dynamic range. While for the subscribers end, the performance versus cost optimization often ends up with multifunction MMICs, the optimization for higher performance required for base stations leads to circuits, based on discrete components or on MMICs of different technologies. A multi chip module based on MMICs with embedded elements, is a small, low cost, and low part count solution, which maintains high performance. The described work includes the design of two GaAs MMICs and RF circuitry, and their integration with GaAs and silicon discrete chips into a MMCM