Recent European Development Programmes for Volume Applications of Millimeter Waves IC´s

The advantages of using mm-waves are well known (directivity, high capacity, high bandwidth) and throughout the world, important development work is carried out on mm-wave IC´s. In Europe, with the support of the Commission of the European Union, there are, since few years, considerable effort directed towards the development of millimeter wave technologies. This paper will present an overview of the circuits and of the related applications developed in the following projects : AIMS (Advanced Integrated Millimeter-wave Subsystems), CLASSIC (Components for LArge aignal at Sixty GaAs IC´s) and MBS (Mobile Broadband System). An impressive number of mmwave circuits are being or have been realised, using modem heterostructures technologies such as : Pseudomorphic HEMT 0.25 ¿m and 0.15 ¿m of gatelength and GaInP emitter Hetero-Bipolar Transistor. In the AIMS project which basically covers the frequency domain from 20 to 40 GHz, more than 12 different circuits (LNAs, HPAs, mixers, VCOs) have been developed for applications such as mmwave radiolinks, airport surveillance radar, satellite communications and VSAT, railway traffic and speed control and so on. Extending the frequency range of AIMS and strongly correlated with it, the CLASSIC project AIMS to develop mmwave IC´s for the 40 to 80 GHz range, for communications and automotive applications. The CLASSIC technology is directly used in the RACE project MBS which is developing a mobile transmission system of high capacity (¿ 20 Mbits) using frequencies between 62 to 66 GHz. More than 14 IC´s are used for the millimeter wave front end.