A Low-Power Radiation-Hardened Ka -Band CMOS Phased-Array Receiver for Small Satellite Constellation

• Published in: IEEE journal of solid-state circuits Vol. 59; no. 2; pp. 1 - 15
• Main Authors: Fu, Xi, You, Dongwon, Wang, Yun, Wang, Xiaolin, Fadila, Ashibir Aviat, Liu, Chenxin, Kato, Sena, Wang, Chun, Li, Zheng, Pang, Jian, Shirane, Atsushi, Okada, Kenichi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.02.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: <inline-formula xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX"> Ka</tex-math> </inline-formula>-band; Arrays; Beamforming; CMOS; Communications systems; Coupling; Current sharing; Digital Video Broadcasting; Gain; Impedance matching; Inductors; low Earth orbit (LEO); Low earth orbit satellites; Low earth orbits; Low noise; low power; magnetic tuning; multi-coupling; Noise levels; Phase shift keying; phase shifter; Phase shifters; phased array; Power consumption; Power demand; Power management; Radiation; Radiation hardening; radiation hardness; Receiving antennas; Satellite broadcasting; satellite communication; Satellite communications; Satellite constellations; Satellites; Sidelobes; Small satellites; Solar panels; Topology
• ISSN: 0018-9200; 1558-173X
• DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2023.3308562

This article introduces a low-power radiation-hardened <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">Ka</tex-math> </inline-formula>-band CMOS phased-array receiver for the low Earth orbit (LEO) small satellite communication system. As the available solar panel area limits the power consumption of the receiver, a multi-coupling common-gate (CG) low noise amplifier (LNA) with current-sharing topology and built-in 180<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">^\circ</tex-math> </inline-formula> phase shifter is proposed in this work to solve the power issue. The multi-coupling LNA utilizes three coupling inductors to reduce the input matching impedance with a smaller input CMOS transistor size. After implementing the proposed technique, a single beamformer realized a 3.4-mW typical power consumption compared with the conventional works with 17.3-195-mW power consumption. The receiver with magnetic-tuning phase shifter (MTPS) has 0.06-dB/Mrad gain and 0.4<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">^\circ</tex-math> </inline-formula>/Mrad phase degradations and is the lowest reported root-mean-square phase and gain errors due to radiation. The proposed receiver achieves <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">-</tex-math> </inline-formula>22-dBm IIP3 with a 3.8-dB noise figure. The required on-chip area for each element is only 0.2 mm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">^2</tex-math> </inline-formula>. In the over-the-air (OTA) measurement, digital video broadcasting-second generation extension (DVB-S2x) standard modulated signals of up to 256 amplitude phase shift keying (APSK) can be supported by the proposed large array modules. This work realizes <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">-</tex-math> </inline-formula>33.2-dB error vector magnitude (EVM) and 12.8-Gb/s link speed with 1.6-GHz channel bandwidth. The measured beam pattern can cover radiated angle from <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">-</tex-math> </inline-formula>50<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">^\circ</tex-math> </inline-formula> to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">+</tex-math> </inline-formula>50<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">^\circ</tex-math> </inline-formula> with lower than <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">-</tex-math> </inline-formula>10-dBc sidelobe level. Because of the proposed multi-coupling LNA and MTPS, a low-power radiation-hardened phased-array receiver for small LEO satellites can be achieved in this work.