The F6501 from IDT is an 8-channel transmitter (TX) silicon IC designed for Ku-Band SATCOM phased array applications from 12.5 to 15 GHz. The core IC has 360° 6-bit phase control coupled with 35 dB 6-bit gain control on each channel to achieve fine beam steering and gain compensation between radiating channels. The device has 25 dB of nominal gain and an OP1dB of over 13 dBm. The core chip achieves an RMS phase error of 3° and an RMS gain error of 0.4 dB over the frequency of operation. The typical total power consumption is 1.4W (175mW per channel) at OP1dB. This IC has been developed on a SiGeBiCMOS process.
