Seed-sized signal amplification chips could boost space communications

Credit: ESA-SJM Photo
This tiny signal amplifier, smaller than a strawberry seed, was built by the European Space Agency to fill a gap in current technology and help enable future radar observation and communications space missions.
“This integrated circuit is a low-noise amplifier with a diameter of just 1.8 x 0.9 mm,” explains ESA microwave engineer David Cuadrado-Calle. “Achieving cutting-edge performance, the role of low-noise amplifiers is to boost very weak signals to usable levels.”
In the future, it will be used both for radar-based missions (where the weak signal is a radar echo received by the instrument after reflecting off the Earth’s surface and returning to the satellite) and for telecommunications missions, where communication signals are sent from Earth. may be used. It is amplified by satellites and sent back to Earth for broadband access and broadcast services.
“This amplifier was designed by ESA’s Radio Frequency Equipment and Technology Division and incorporates gallium nitride on silicon, making it much more robust to high input power signals than previous designs.Chip Manufacturing was held at MACOM’s European Semiconductor Center (formerly known as OMMIC) in France.
The circuit design was driven by the needs of a proposed ESA mission, an Earth Explorer candidate called Wivern, following the current radar-based cloud profiling EarthCARE mission that ESA is conducting in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA. It was.
Wivern (short for Wind Speed Radar Nephoscope) provides the first measurements of wind and precipitation within clouds, while also providing profiles of rain, snow and ice water to improve predictions of hazardous weather, Provides new insight into severe storms.
To accomplish this, the Wyvern will use W-band radar signals. In practice, this requires transmitting thousands of watts of power, and the mission’s receive chain must withstand that leakage.
W-band also holds potential for future high-frequency and high-bandwidth satellite communications.
David added: “Building this low-noise amplifier was an exciting task for us, as such work is usually given to European industry or universities, but in this case we We knew exactly what we needed and had the skills to achieve it. The in-house project also gave us the opportunity to flex our chip design muscles.”
The capabilities of this low-noise amplifier were tested at ESA’s external high-frequency laboratory, VTT Millilab, and recently reported in IEEE Microwave and Wireless Technology Letters.
Further information: David Cuadrado-Calle et al, A GaN-on-Si MMIC LNA for Spaceborne Cloud Profiling Radars and W-Band Telecom Links, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Technology Letters (2024). DOI: 10.1109/LMWT.2024.3469276
Provided by the European Space Agency
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