Electrical/​Electronics

The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) requires state-of-the-art frequency references that are derived and distributed from very stable atomic frequency standards. A new Frequency Reference System (FRS) and Frequency Reference Distribution System (FRD) have been developed, which...

An indium phosphide MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuit) mixer was developed, processed, and tested in the NGC 35-nm-gate-length HEMT (high electron mobility transistor) process. The MMIC mixers were tested and assembled in the miniature MMIC receiver module described in “Miniature...

The planar GaAs Shottky diode frequency multiplier is a critical technology for the local oscillator (LO) for submillimeter-wave heterodyne receivers due to low mass, tenability, long lifetime, and room-temperature operation. The use of a W-band (75–100 GHz) power amplifier...

Research findings were reported from an investigation of new gallium nitride (GaN) monolithic millimeter-wave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifiers (PAs) targeting the highest output power and the highest efficiency for class-A operation in W-band (75–110 GHz). W-band PAs are a...

A monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) receiver can be used as a building block for next-generation radio astronomy instruments that are scalable to hundreds or thousands of pixels. W- band (75–110 GHz) low-noise receivers are needed for radio astronomy interfer- ometers and spectrometers,...

A 35-nm-gate-length InP, high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) with a high-indium-content channel as the key component was developed to produce an MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuit) power amplifier. With a shorter gate length than previous transistor generations, it allows for electrons to...

Compact amplifier assemblies of a type now being developed for operation at frequencies of hundreds of gigahertz comprise multiple amplifier units in parallel arrangements to increase power and/or cascade arrangements to increase gains. Each amplifier unit is a monolithic microwave...

Special designs of two types of electronic components — transistors and transmission lines — have been conceived to optimize the performances of these components as parts of waveguide-embedded differential-amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) of the type described...

There is an update on the subject matter of “Differential InP HEMT MMIC Amplifiers Embedded in Waveguides” (NPO-42857) NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 33, No. 9 (September 2009), page 35. To recapitulate: Monolithic microwave integrated-circuit (MMIC) amplifiers of a type now being developed for...

In order to perform precision landings for space missions, a control system must be accurate to within ten meters. Feature detection applied against images taken during descent and correlated against the provided base image is computationally expensive and requires tens of seconds of processing time to do just one...

Existing software has been modified to yield the benefits of integer fixed double-differenced GPS-phased ambiguities when processing data from a single GPS receiver with no access to any other GPS receiver data. When the double-differenced combination of phase biases can be fixed reliably, a significant...

Weather forecasting, hurricane tracking, and atmospheric science applications depend on humidity sounding of atmosphere. Current instruments provide these measurements from ground-based, airborne, and low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites by measuring radiometric temperature on the flanks of the 183-GHz water...

A differential SiGe oscillator circuit uses a resonant ring-oscillator topology in order to electronically tune the oscillator over multi-octave bandwidths. The oscillator’s tuning is extremely linear, because the oscillator’s frequency depends on the magnetic tuning of a YIG sphere, whose...