All FET Front-End for 12 GHz Satellite Broadcasting Reception

A 12 GHz receiver front-end has been designed and realised which uses field-effect transistors for each of the three major functions of r.f. preamplifier, mixer and local oscillator. In each of these functions, the FET presents its particular advantages of low noise figure as an amplifier, a conversion gain as a mixer and a relatively high efficiency as an oscillator. An overall noise figure of 4 dB should be possible in production quantities. The structure and overall system performance will be described.