Schottky Diode Based 1.2 THz Receivers Operating at Room-Temperature and Below for Planetary Atmospheric Sounding

Author

Schlecht, Erich ; Siles, Jose V. ; Lee, Chi-Kwan ; Lin, Richard ; Thomas, B. ; Chattopadhyay, Goutam ; Mehdi, Imran

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

Volume

4

Issue

6

fYear

2014

fDate

Nov. 2014

Firstpage

661

Lastpage

669

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the design, fabrication and test of two designs for all-solid-state planar Schottky diode based receivers working in the 1.2 THz range. At room temperature, a double side-band (DSB) mixer noise temperature of 2800 K and a conversion loss of 10.5 dB have been measured at 1134 GHz. When the mixers are cooled down to 120 K, they exhibit DSB noise temperatures as low as about 2000 K and conversion loss of 12 dB. The compact local oscillator source (LO) is based on a x2x3 chain and sufficiently pumps the sub-harmonic mixer with 1.5-2.5 mW of power. The receivers provide around 15% RF bandwidth and are well suited for planetary missions to investigate methane and other key lines.

Keywords

Schottky diodes; oscillators; DSB noise temperature; RF bandwidth; compact local oscillator source; conversion loss; double side-band mixer noise temperature; frequency 1.2 THz; frequency 1134 GHz; methane; planetary atmospheric sounding; planetary mission; solid-state planar Schottky diode based receiver; subharmonic mixer; temperature 2800 K; temperature 293 K to 298 K; x2x3 chain; Harmonic analysis; Local oscillators; Mixers; Receivers; Schottky diodes; Temperature measurement; Varactors; Schottky diode mixer; broadband terahertz (THz) receiver; frequency multiplier; local oscillator; room temperature heterodyne receiver; subharmonic mixer; varactor;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Terahertz Science and Technology, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

2156-342X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TTHZ.2014.2361621

Filename

6930827