Design and fabrication of integrated RF modules in liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) substrates

This paper presents the design and fabrication of fully-packaged RF modules that are suitable for integration in portable handset applications. The system blocks utilize high Q passive devices that are embedded in liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) based substrates. Firstly, the paper introduces the packaging technology that utilizes multiple sheets of LCP substrate. Characterization of high Q inductors on the multi-layer process is then demonstrated showing scalability of inductor size and Q from 900 MHz to 10 GHz. Finally, the paper presents the results of the following key LCP based RF modules: voltage controlled oscillators, concurrent dual-band oscillators, mixers, filters, and baluns. A comparison with the current state-of-the-art is made. The paper shows that the implemented system modules are smaller in size, with superior electrical performance to currently available discrete solutions. The paper shows that the proposed technology supports high-density integration at low cost and hence, is suitable for large volume commercial wireless handheld applications. Finally, a MEMS process to be integrated on the proposed LCP technology for tunability of the modules is presented.