Sub-Orbital Flight Demonstration of a 183/540–600 GHz Hybrid CMOS-InP and CMOS-Schottky-MEMS Limb-Sounder

Adrian Tang, Maria Alonso Del Pino, Yanghyo Kim, Yan Zhang, Theodore Reck, Cecile Jung-Kubiak, Deacon Nemchick, Logan Dyer, Gabriel Virbila, Goutam Chattopadhyay, Mau Chung Frank Chang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of a sub-orbital flight demonstration with a 183 GHz and 540–600 GHz limb-sounding instrument aboard a stratospheric ballooncraft. The 183 GHz band provides soundings of stratospheric H2O and is implemented with a hybrid CMOS-InP receiver architecture which provides excellent sensitivity while remaining compact (162 g) and offering an extremely low DC power consumption (0.62 W). The 540–600 GHz channel sounds stratospheric O3 and uses a combination of a CMOS local oscillator, GaAs Schottky mixer and micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) RF switch for calibration, again offering competitive form factor (1.4 Kg) and low DC power consumption (6.6 W) compared to prior instruments. The instrument was flown on the NASA Reck-Tang Limb-sounding Experiment (ReckTangLE) ballooncraft and performed atmospheric soundings across New Mexico and Northwestern Texas on Oct. 17 2019.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)560-573
Number of pages14
JournalIEEE Journal of Microwaves
Volume1
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Apr 2021

Keywords

  • CMOS
  • InP
  • MEMS
  • ReckTangLE
  • Schottky
  • hybrid
  • limb-sounder

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