Módulo posterior de un receptor en banda Ka para aplicaciones de radioastronomía

Abstract

This paper presents the design, simulation and measurement of the Back-End Module (BEM) first prototype for the QUIJOTE project, which is a new ground-based experiment for characterizing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization. The system is a broadband direct conversion receiver based on low noise amplification, band pass filtering and Schottky diode detection working in the Ka band. System simulations have been carried out combining individual subsystem measurements and non-linear models to validate the proposed configuration. Measurements show more than 30 dB of RF gain over the 26 to 36 GHz band with a noise figure around 3.5 dB. Detected voltage is in the range 1-10 mV which meets the application specifications.