A Ku-Band Fin-Line Front-End with a Hybrid-Coupled Balanced Mixer and a Gunn Oscillator

A simple and compact Ku-band fin-line front-end is described, which has been realized by an integrated fin-line hybrid-coupled balanced mixer and a Gunn oscillator. The front-end operates over a 30 per cent frequency band around 14 GHz with a conversion loss of 6 ± 0.5 dB. The integrated local oscillator with an output power of typical 13 dBm can be tuned to any frequency between 11 and 15 GHz by means of a tuning plunger. The mixer exhibits VSWRs of less than 1.7 : 1 at the RF and IF port and can handle IF frequencies up to 2 GHz. The LO isolation at the RF port is better than 20 dB.