GaAs MEMBRANE-SUPPORTED YAGI-UDA ANTENNA 45 GHz RECEIVER
A. STAVINIDRIS, A. MULLER, D. NECULOIU, D. VASILACHE, M. DRAGOMAN, I. PETRINI, G. KONSTANTINIDIS, Z. CHATZOPOULOS, L. BARY, R. PLANA

Introduction
In recent years, the micromachining technology has been proposed for the fabrication of millimetre wave circuits on very thin dielectric membranes, mostly for silicon substrates [1, 2]. Micromachining of GaAs is an exciting less explored alternative for manufacturing of components and modules for high performance communication systems. GaAs micromachining is very interesting for the RF-MEMS field also due to the easy monolithically integration of micromachined passive circuit elements with active devices manufactured on the same chip. The monolithically integration of a membrane-supported antenna with a detecting Schottky diode is a practical solution for building very compact and low-cost receivers for the millimetre and sub-millimetre wave frequency range.
In the millimetre-wave frequency range, a receiving front-end can be based on the direct conversion (video detection) technique. This approach has the following advantages: reduced complexity, low cost, high level of circuit integration, filtering only at low (video) frequencies. First micromachined receiver module based on the monolithic integration of a folded slot antenna with a Schottky diode, both on the same GaAs membrane was reported by the authors of this paper [3]; it was designed for 38 GHz operating frequency.
This paper presents the design, fabrication and characterization of a GaAs membrane-supported 45 GHz receiver based on the monolithic integration of a Yagi-Uda antenna with a Schottky diode.