An X-band front-end module using HTS technique for a commercial dual mode radar

Abstract

A front end module of receiver has been designed to eliminate the interference between the tracking and searching radar used in commercial radar application. The module is located at the receiving path of the searching radar. The proposed module includes two parts, the HTS superconducting filter and cryogenic low noise amplifier. The bandwidth of the eight-resonator HTS hairpin filter is 2% at the X-band frequency. Low insertion loss (below1 dB) and good skirt rejection (down to 60 dB at 50 MHz from the pass-band edge) are obtained. The two-stage low noise amplifier is designed by commercial low noise HEMT devices, NE321000. Two Lange couplers are located at output and input port of each amplifier stage to improve the return loss and to make LNA easily match to optimal low noise impendence. The cryogenic amplifier shows 30 dB gain and 0.4 dB NF at 77 K in X-band. A very high rejection is necessary for the elimination of unwanted spurious signals. The acceptable specification is 110 dB down at 500 MHz away from the band-edge of the filter. In general, the skirt rejection of a hairpin HT filter is pretty good near the pass-band edge, but may become worse far from the pass-band edge. To meet the requirement of this commercial radar application, a high rejection suspended stripline filter is put after the low noise amplifier. The whole module shows an maximal NF of 1.5 dB, a gain of 25 dB around pass-band frequencies, and a rejection of better than 110 dB at 500 MHz away from the band edge of the filter. It totally solves the interference problem in this dual mode radar.