Description: | Layout of a beamformer prototype chip for EMBRACE designed by Klaas Visser, Erik van der Wal, and Kaston Leung. A fully integrated beam former Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) has been designed for the SKA demonstrator project EMBRACE. The chip will take care of the beam control by means of phase-shift and amplitude control, the latter if required by the system design. The design includes an input Low Noise Amplifier, output buffer amplifiers and digital control around a core of the actual beam circuits. Two independent beams are generated. A new beam forming technique, for which a patent has been filed, has been used. This technique has been successfully tested on a Gallium Arsenide MMIC. However, in order to meet the EMBRACE cost targets, a higher integration density and a lower cost technology are required. Therefore the new chip has been designed in a Silicon Germanium process, a more or less standard Silicon process with Germanium added for high frequency performance while maintaining all the benefits of mainstream Silicon technology. |