Millimeter-Wave Multi-Port Front-End Receivers: Design Considerations and Implementation

This chapter covers recent achievements on the integrated 60 GHz millimeter-wave front-end receiver based on the multi-port (six-port) concept. For this purpose, the design procedure of a fully integrated 60 GHz multi-port (six-port) front-end receiver implemented on a thin ceramic substrate (εr = 9.9, h = 127 μm) using an miniature hybrid microwave integrated circuit (MHMIC) fabrication process is presented in detail. All components constituting the proposed front-end receiver including an 8 × 2 antenna array, a low-noise amplifier (LNA), a six-port circuit, and the RF power detectors are presented and characterized separately before they are integrated into the final front-end receiver prototype. The performance of the latter has been experimentally evaluated in terms of various M-PSK/M-QAM demodulations. The obtained demodulation results are very satisfactory (the constellation points for all considered M-PSK/M-QAM schemes are very close to the ideal locations), demonstrating and confirming the high ability of the proposed 60 GHz millimeter-wave six-port front-end receiver to operate as a high-performance quadrature demodulator, without any calibration, for modulation schemes up to 32 symbols