Experimental 20-40 GHz band InP MMIC based cryogenic LNAs prototyping

The main objective of this activity is to industrialise a wide band 20- 40GHz InP MMIC based LNA for multipurpose application (EO, Science, Exploration, etc...) Future near Earth mission such as Euclid will use 26 GHz band and future deep space missions (potentially Juice) 32 GHz (Science) to transmit high datarate. Very stringent noise performance requirement will impose the use of very high performance cryogenic low noise amplifier. The advantage of MMIC technology is cost reduction for a large scale production and performance repeatability. The future ground stations architecture will use arrays of antenna and will benefit from this performance improvement and cost reduction. The purpose of the activity is the design of large band MMIC cryo LNA, the production of a test wafer (few 10 s of MMIC) and validation of the industriability over a set of few 10's of complete LNA.  

Two parallel TRP activities have been completed in 2012 for the development of Ka band InP cryogenic amplifiers. The purpose of the proposed GSTP is the continuation of the TRP activity for the validation of the K/Ka band amplifier in operational environement and for the preparation of the product demonstration. MMIC technology is intrinsically wideband and the design will cover the frequency band of many applications from earth exploration, science and exploration mission and radioastronomy as well.