© Skyarna Ltd 2012

 

Skyarna’s partners have worked for many years on perfecting leading edge MMIC circuit design and packaging techniques for microwave and millimetre-wave applications. MMIC circuits have been designed on many processes (e.g. WIN GaAs, NGST GaAs, HRL InP, Ommic mHEMT). Many different packaging techniques have been developed (metal waveguide, multi-layer organic soft board). This work culminated in the design and build of a 65 GHz transceiver for broad band communications and many receivers for passive millimetre-wave imaging. The passive millimetre-wave imager work required broad frequency range MMIC LNA and detector design plus packaging to achieve >50 dB flat gain in a single low cost unit. 100’s of receivers were manufactured at several frequency ranges. The transceiver work has recently been progressed for E-band communications.

 

The innovative work of Skyarna designers contributed to the following published papers:

 

Publications

 

• “Packaging and MMIC Design for Low Cost mm-wave Modules”, J.R. Powell and P.D. Munday, IET 2006

 

• “Performance of 94GHz receivers for passive imaging”, Richard G. Humphreys*, Stephen M. Taylor, Paul A Manning, Paul D Munday and Jeff Powell, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6548

 

• “The development of affordable front-end hardware for mm-wave imaging using multi-layer softboard technology”, Paul D. Munday, Jeff Powell, Dave Bannister and Paul J. Rice,Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6548

 

• "Mechanically scanned real time passive millimetre wave imaging at 94GHz", Appleby R., Anderton R.A., Price S., Salmon N.A., Sinclair G.N., Coward P.R., Barnes A.R., Munday P.D., Moore M., Lettington A.H. & Robertson D.A., Passive Millimeter Wave Imaging Technology VI, Proc. SPIE #5077 , pp. 1-6, Orlando, USA, April, 2003.

 

• “A 35 to 40 GHz Image Rejection Receiver Front End”, P.D. Munday, A.R. Barnes, M.T. Moore, G. Ball and A.L. Brown, MM-Wave Circuits and Technology for Commercial Applications, IEE Colloquium March 1999 pp 2/1 - 2/6

 

• “A comparison of W-band monolithic resistive mixer architectures”, A R Bames, P Munday, R Jennings and M T Moore, 2002 IEEE MTT-S Digest

 

• “A W-band Radar Receiver for Cloud Observations”, P. Kangaslahti, P. Sjoman, P. Jukkala, A. R. Barnes, P. Munday, R. Jennings, M. T. Moore, T. Karttaavi, M. Lahdes, J. Tuovinen, IEEE European Microwave Conf. 2002 , pp 1 - 4