Low-noise amplifier (LNA) and Power amplifier (PA) for Radio-Frequency (RF) System-on–Chip (SoC) Applications on Silicon on Sapphire (SOS) Substrates

This Phase I SBIR research project explores the feasibility of a portable long-range magnetic field communication that can transmit and receive a minimum data rate of 10kbps at a distance of 1 km without use of repeaters. Magnetic communications can function through earth, concrete and buildings. A digital modulation scheme is proposed for both voice and data. In the voice transmission mode a VOX circuit can be employed to conserve battery power. Advantages by using digital modulations include potential to MUX and DEMUX voice and data, use of error correction codes for error free communications, potential use of data compression algorithms, and reduced bandwidth. The novel receiver approach eliminates out-of-band noise with an extremely sharp filter, and the signal is extracted from the in-band noise by an auto-correlator receiver. The auto correlation function offers some other unique benefits such as making the system more LPI/LPD. The portable transmit antenna is envisioned as a tuned magnetic loop antenna. If the pulses were filtered to create Gaussian or sinc pulses, bandwidth reductions would accrue which would reduce antenna bandwidth requirements.