Investigation on a miniaturized X-band transceiver front-end in a cost-effective SiP solution

Abstract

This paper presents a feasible and efficient implementation of a miniaturized X-band transceiver front-end in a cost-effective system-in-package (SiP) technology. Integrating multiple radio-frequency (RF) GaAs / GaN dies with land grid array (LGA) packages is one of the most commonly used solutions in wireless application. Meanwhile, incorporating the RF power devices with quad flat no-lead (QFN) package is a promising substitute due to good thermal conductivity, which utilizes a large die pad in the center which directly transfers the heat from the GaAs / GaN dies from the package to the outside. In this work, an integrated X-band transceiver is designed and implemented with the LGA and QFN technology, respectively. Subsequently, an overall system-level performance investigation and comparison has been analyzed and illustrated. Moreover, the detailed thermal-electrical / thermal-mechanical analysis and comparison are presented in this paper. According to the simulation results, the proposed SiP layout achieves good power performance and reliability with acceptable costs. Finally, the 8-12GHz transceiver is respectively implemented in a QFN and LGA technology, achieving a similar performance and specification. The total package size of the X-band transceiver is slightly different, which is 9*12 mm2 (QFN) and 11*14 mm2 (LGA).