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

Committee:

Dr. John Cressler, ECE, Chair , Advisor

Dr. Paul Steffes, ECE

Dr. Gregory Durgin, ECE

Dr. Negar Ehsan, NASA

Dr. Glenn Lightsey, AE

Abstract:

The objective of this research is to leverage silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) integrated circuit technologies to develop millimeter-wave receiver components for future space-based atmospheric sounding radiometers. Integrated SiGe components can potentially enable significant reductions in the size, weight, and power consumption of these instruments and enable economical production of radiometers for proposed constellations of Earth-observing CubeSats. This work explores the attainable performance of multiple key components of millimeter-wave radiometer receivers developed using best-in-class SiGe HBTs. The circuits developed under this research highlight the ability of custom SiGe HBT integrated circuits to substantially improve the integration and power consumption of these receivers while achieving comparable radiometric sensitivity to receivers implemented using traditionally-used millimeter-wave components.