Reduced Size Weight and Power Consumption for SATCOM Antennas

Emerging military, space and commercial communications systems, are placing a high premium on low-cost, small size, weight and power consumption (SwaP) RF components, while at the same time increasing demands for higher functionality. This trend necessitates the utilization of low SWaP phased array antennas that operate well at that frequency band. The future-generation of wafer-scale antenna arrays will require 3D multi-layer modules for improved performance, reduced cost and minimized packaging complexity through 3D interconnects. This arrangement, however, will reduce the space for the active and passive components of the array including the power amplifiers, low noise amplifiers, matching networks, and interconnects. As a result, the heat flux per unit area (W/cm2) will be increased and conventional air cooling may be insufficient to effectively cool the antenna array since major heat generators (e.g. PAs) may be enclosed by wafers and will not have access to cold air from the outside environment. In order to address these issues, EMAG Technologies proposes to develop a 30 GHz wafer-scale array with an integrated microscale cooling system. Moreover, since it is very important that the micro-cooling system does not interact with the RF fields of the antenna array, electrothermal co-design of the system will be attempted.