A planar hybrid transceiving mixer at 76.5GHz for automotive radar applications

A growing number of applications for radar systems in automobiles demands for low-cost radar front-ends. A planar monostatic radar front-end is particularly suited for low cost applications as it uses only one antenna for transmission and reception and, thus, minimizes the needed chip area. Generally, in a standard homodyne radar a radio-frequency (RF) signal generated by an oscillator is used for both, the transmitted signal and the local oscillator (LO). Well controlled distribution of the input power between antenna and mixer is crucial. A transceiving mixer at 76.5GHz is presented, where this distribution is done by use of a rat-race coupler. In a conventional transceiver the oscillator signal is split into the transmitted and in the LO signal by a directional coupler. A second directional coupler is needed in order to merge the received and the LO signal at the mixer. In our design the purpose of splitting and merging the signals is realized with only one coupler. Elimination of the second coupler reduces losses significantly. The received signal is down-converted to the intermediate frequency (IF) by use of a balanced mixer. For small relative speed in a CW-Doppler-radar or short distance in a FMCWradar the IF is very small. Therefore 1/f noise is a significant value. In order to achieve good 1/f noise characteristics, Schottky diodes were used. The diodes were flip-chip bonded onto a microstrip circuit on a Al2O3 substrate. The assembled transceiver was measured on-waver. An input power of 7 dBm was applied. The measured output power was 3 dBm and the conversion loss 9 dB. A noise figure of 15.3 dB was measured at 100 kHz