Miniature Rugged RF Filters and Low Power Oscillators

Future artillery launched systems will take advantage of high levels of circuit integration to achieve sophisticated signal processing capabilities in a small rugged package. Two areas that do not presently lend themselves to miniaturization are filters and oscillators. This project will develop miniature rugged RF circuits using thin film microwave acoustic bulk wave resonators and filters and a new rugged multi-chip module concept. The thin film resonator technology offers significant size reductions and high performance compared to ceramic or other conventional frequecny control technologies. The Phase I tasks will demonstrate a high performance narrow band filter for use in fuzing and GPS telemetry application and design a low power oscillator using high performance microwave acoustic resonators to control oscillator frequency. The special issue of circuit packaging for the high G environment will be investigated and a rugged simple multi-chip module concept will be demonstrated in Phase I with more complex circuits fabricated during Phase II. Potential commercial applications include personal communications systems and remote environmental sensor telemetry systems.