Compact, High Power Capacity, and Low Insertion Loss Millimeter-Wave On-Chip Limiting Filter With GaAs PIN Technology

In this paper, a collaborative design of compact, high-power capacity, and low insertion loss millimeter-wave limiting filter using gallium arsenide (GaAs) PIN technology is presented. Parallel topology is employed to distribute the PIN diodes of the first stage of limiting circuit for high power handling capacity. In order to reduce the circuit size, the filtering function structure is incorporated into the limiter. Four transmission zeros (TZs) are introduced to improve the out-of-band suppression performances of the limiting filter. By utilizing the inductive short-circuited stub, a parallel resonator is introduced to exhibit the passband characteristic. Semi-lumped and pi-type topologies are employed to reduce the size of the conventional quarter-wavelength transmission line and introduce several TZs within the stopband. An on-chip limiting filter sample is fabricated by the GaAs PIN process and occupies an area of only 1.1 x 0.9 mm(2) . It is measured with the insertion loss of 1.67 dB at the center frequency of 35 GHz, the stopband suppression of better than 20 dB, and the tolerable input power of greater than 40 dBm. Compared with the traditional designs, good features of high-power capacity, low insertion loss, and miniaturization are obtained with the presented on-chip limiting filter.