Miniaturized 0.3-6 GHz LTCC six-port receiver for software defined radio

Abstract

The six-port architecture reemerges from the search of low-cost, multi-band and multi-standard transceivers. Its inherent advantages, especially its broadband behavior, make this a structure a good candidate to implement a Software De¯ned Radio (SDR). However, broadband six-port network designs lead to large size circuits,

especially for operating frequencies in the lower gigahertz region. New technologies must be explored in order to achieve compact size

and low-cost productions for con¯gurable radio terminals and mobile communication applications. In this paper, the Low Temperature Co-¯red Ceramic (LTCC) technology is proposed for implementing a broadband six-port receiver. A compact (30mm x 30mm x 1.25mm) four-octave LTCC six-port receiver is presented. Experimental demodulation results show a good performance over the frequency

range from 0.3 to 6 GHz. The demodulation of up to 15.625Msymbol/s signals, i.e., 93.6 Mbps for 64-QAM, has been satisfactorily performed, with a measured Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) value of 3.7%.