Aspects of 5G and Millimetre-wave Miniaturised Components and Circuits for Highly Integrated Modules

This paper describes multilayer miniaturized and high performance millimeter-wave (mmW) components and circuits for mmW modules at a low cost using advanced thick film technology for 5G applications. A 28 GHz mmW module has been designed, which integrates MMICs (PA, LAN, converter, amplifier), and passives, including LD combline filter, parallel coupled line (PCL) BPF, patch antenna array with embedded splitter and matching network, and bias network, onto a single substrate. Here the IC mounting cavities are formed from trench-vias and with precise dimensional control. The multilayer miniaturized components, using lumped-distributed (LD), broadside coupling, and meander-line approaches, have been designed and characterized off-chip, covering 2 GHz to 100 GHz. These include LD combline filter, PCL BPF, couple, EM coupled patch antenna array, and embedded splitter and matching network. A new multilayer coplanar waveguide capacitor configuration, where for increasing the capacitance density yet maintaining high performance, a number of pairs of parallel plates were employed horizontally. Using this configuration, a range of off-chip capacitors are designed and modelled, with a self-resonance frequency beyond 40 GHz. Further TFMS and FGCPW interconnect were designed and accurately characterized to 100 GHz for various transverse dimensions with a low loss for mmW MCM applications.