Anders Emrich

The Odin satellite - I. Radiometer design and test

The Sub-millimetre and Millimetre Radiometer (SMR) is the main instrument on the Swedish, Canadian, Finnish and French spacecraft Odin. It consists of a 1.1 metre diameter telescope with four tuneable heterodyne receivers covering the ranges 486-504 GHz and 541-581 GHz, and one fixed at 118.75 GHz together with backends that provide spectral resolution from 150 kHz to 1 MHz. This Letter describes the Odin radiometer, its operation and performance with the data processing and calibration described in Paper II.

A Low VSWR 2SB Schottky Receiver

A novel high performance waveguide integrated sideband separating (2SB) Schottky receiver operating in the 320-360 GHz band is presented. The unique receiver design is based on a core of two subharmonic Schottky diode mixers with embedded LNAs with a minimum noise figure of 1.8 dB, fed by LO and RF quadrature hybrids. At room temperature, a typical receiver SSB noise temperature of 3000 K is measured over most of the band reaching a minimum of 2700 K, with only 4 mW of LO power. The sideband ratio (SBR) is typically below 15 dB over the whole band and the measured LO input return loss is typically below 15 dB broadband. High performance sideband separating Schottky receivers can now for the first time be considered for submillimeter wave systems enabling new types of instrument concepts.

A Geostationary Atmospheric Sounder for now-casting and short-range weather forecasting

Millimeter and sub-millimeter-wave imagers and sounders are considered for future meteorological and climate observation satellites [1]. The Geostationary Atmospheric Sounder (GAS) [2], is a development project for an imaging sounder at frequency bands around 53 GHz, 118 GHz, 183 GHz, and 380 GHz. These frequency bands are included to satisfy the user requirements for vertical profiles of temperature and humidity under all weather conditions. The primary advantage of a Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) for remote sensing, compared with a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), is that continuous monitoring is possible over a large area of the Earths surface and atmosphere. This is desirable for nowcasting, and short range forecasting of rapidly evolving meteorological phenomena.

A Broadband, Low Noise, Integrated 340 GHz Schottky Diode Receiver

A 340 GHz subharmonic Schottky diode mixer and a multioctave (3-16 GHz) custom low noise amplifier (LNA) have been integrated to form a compact receiver front-end module, exhibiting ultra low noise with an exceptional flat response and broadband instantaneous frequency coverage. At room temperature, a receiver noise temperature of 870 K is measured at an LO drive of 1.2 mW at 170 GHz. The total dc power consumption of the LNA is below 120 mW. Measurements are in good agreement with simulations taking the mixer and LNA mismatch interaction into account.

Heterodyne instrument for FIRST (HIFI): preliminary design

We describe the preliminary design of the proposed Heterodyne Instrument for FIRST (HIFI). The instrument will have a continuous frequency coverage over the range from 480 to 1250 GHz in five bands, while a sixth band will provide coverage for 1410 - 1910 GHz and 2400 - 2700 GHz. The first five bands will use SIS mixers and varactor frequency multipliers while in the sixth band a laser photomixer local oscillator will pump HEB mixers. HIFI will have an instantaneous bandwidth of 4 GHz, analyzed in parallel by two types of spectrometers: a pair of wide-band spectrometers (WBS), and a pair of high- resolution spectrometer (HRS). The wide-band spectrometer will use acousto-optic technology with a frequency resolution of 1 MHz and a bandwidth of 4 GHz for each of the two polarizations. The HRS will provide two combinations of bandwidth and resolution: 1 GHz bandwidth at 200 kHz resolution, and at least 500 MHz at 100 kHz resolution. The HRS will be divided into 4 or 5 sub-bands, each of which can be placed anywhere within the full 4 GHz IF band. The instrument will be able to perform rapid and complete spectral line surveys with resolving powers from 103 up to 107 (300 - 0.03 km/s) and deep line observations.

A 170 GHz 45

We present a 135deg/45deg phase shifter hybrid intended to be used in subharmonic sideband separation mixer schemes at submillimeter-wave frequencies. The design consists of an increased height 90deg 6-arm branch guide coupler with a three stub loaded differential line 45deg phase shifter at the output. The device has been implemented at G-band in an E-plane WR-05 splitblock design with a center frequency of 170 GHz and 15 % bandwidth. Measured S-parameter are in good agreement with simulations showing an isolation and return loss better than 20 dB and an amplitude and phase imbalance within 0.4 dB and 2deg, respectively.

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In this letter, we present results of fully integrated 90-130 GHz receiver based on 100 nm mHEMT technology. The receiver contains a low noise amplifier (LNA), mixer and LO multiplier chain integrated into a single monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC). The circuit is packaged into a waveguide block, characterized and compared to on-wafer measurements. Waveguide to microstrip transitions are used to interface the MMIC to the waveguide. A breakout LNA circuit is also packaged, and its performance is compared to the receiver. The LNA noise was characterized on a wafer and after packaging. The packaged module is measured at both room and cryogenic temperatures, NF of 3.7 dB is measured at 300 K and 0.9 dB at 20 K.

Hybrid for Submillimeter Wave Sideband Separating Subharmonic Mixers

Parylene-C is a polymeric material primarily used in hybrid manufacturing for humidity protection and dielectric isolation. In this study, the influence of Parylene-C on passive millimeter-wave circuits such as transmission lines and resonators is investigated in electromagnetic simulations up to 100 GHz and measurements up to 67 GHz. It is demonstrated that when applying 5-mum Parylene-C, the resonance frequency of a resonator is shifted 0.4% and the Q value is changed slightly. The dissipation factor of the Parylene-C versus frequency has been calculated from measured data. The flip-chip mounted broadband traveling-wave monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit (MMIC) amplifier is also investigated. A 5-mum-thick Parylene-C coat results in a total loss of 1.04 dB. A positive side effect of the Parylene-C is that it allows heat, dissipated in the amplifier, to spread over a larger area, consequently lowering the backside temperature of the flipped MMIC with as much as 10 degC. The results from this study demonstrate that, concerning the electrical performance, Parylene-C is very well suited as protective coating in millimeter-wave applications and can be used as an alternative to a hermetic package in the frequency range from dc to 67 GHz to reduce weight and cost

MMIC-Based Components for MM-Wave Instrumentation

We present the design, fabrication and measurements of a smooth walled spline feed horn antenna for the satellite borne climate research instrument STEAMR operating at 340 GHz. A method has been developed which, for a certain desired beam waist, can be used to optimize the horn profile for high Gaussicity and ultra-low sidelobes. The simulated performance of the horn achieves a beam waist of 1.9 mm over the band 323-357 GHz with Gaussian coupling efficiency exceeding 98%. The peak cross-polar sidelobes are below -28 dB over the required frequency band. For cost effective manufacturing with high repeatability, the smooth wall spline profile is drilled in out from a metal block using a custom made broach. To validate the design and fabrication, planar measurements of the phase and amplitude have been performed and from measured E-field vital horn parameters have been extracted.

Investigation of parylene-C on the performance of millimeter-wave circuits

We report on a heterodyne terahertz spectrometer based on a fully integrated 557-GHz receiver and a digital fast Fourier transform spectrometer. The receiver consists of a chain of multipliers and power amplifiers, followed by a heterostructure barrier varactor tripler that subharmonically pumps a membrane GaAs Schottky diode mixer. All sub-components are newly developed and optimized with regard to the overall receiver performance such as noise temperature, power consumption, weight and physical size. The receiver works at room temperature, has a double sideband noise temperature as low as 2000 K at a maximum power consumption of 4.5 W with an Allan time of 10 s and a sideband gain ratio of 0.52. The performance of the spectrometer is demonstrated by absorption spectroscopy of H2O and CH3OH with an instantaneous bandwidth of 1.5 GHz and a resolution of 183 kHz. Several pressure broadening parameters of methanol absorption lines were determined, that agree with other published data. Using the experimentally determined molecular parameters the CH3OH absorption spectrum could be modeled with very high precision.