Title:  Silicon-Germanium HBT Receiver Components for Millimeter-wave Earth-observing Radiometers

Committee: 

Dr. Cressler, Advisor    

Dr. Steffes, Chair

Dr. Durgin

Abstract: The objective of the proposed research is to leverage submillimeter-wave silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technologies to develop integrated and low power millimeter-wave receiver components for atmospheric sounding radiometers. Integrated SiGe components can potentially reduce the size, weight, and power consumption of these instruments versus the current state of-the-art and enable economical manufacturing of millimeter-wave radiometers for proposed constellations of Earth-observing CubeSats. This research will highlight SiGe as a potentially enabling technology for instrument concepts requiring scale manufacturing of passive millimeter-wave sensors. The first element of the proposed work is the design and characterization of a 183 GHz receiver front-end which leverages the SiGe low-noise amplifiers and power-efficient frequency doubler designed as part of the preliminary research to achieve low-power operation with a monolithic form factor. The second element of the proposed work concerns the development of microwave amplifiers and highly sensitive power detectors which can increase the integration and reduce the power consumption of hyperspectral microwave radiometer receivers for CubeSats. The final element of the proposed research is an investigation into the design tradeoff space for highly compact and low-loss millimeter-wave SiGe HBT Dicke switches.