Demonstration of a Submillimeter-Wave HEMT Oscillator Module at 330 GHz

This low-mass, low-power module may be useful for hidden weapons detection and airport security.

In this work, radial transitions have been successfully mated with a HEMT-based MMIC (high-electron-mobility-transistor-based monolithic microwave integrated circuit) oscillator circuit. The chip has been assembled into a WR2.2 waveguide module for the basic implementation with radial E-plane probe transitions to convert the waveguide mode to the MMIC coplanar waveguide mode. The E-plane transitions have been directly integrated onto the InP substrate to couple the submillimeter-wave energy directly to the waveguides, thus avoiding wirebonds in the RF path. The oscillator demonstrates a measured 1.7 percent DC-RF efficiency at the module level.