For reliable, high-performance wireless communications
Wireless networks have become one of the key communication environments for offering various services such as broadband multimedia for working, educating and entertaining purposes. Supported by 40GHz fixed and mobile access networks, the quality of these multimedia services heavily rely on the performance, reliability and availability of wireless links. However, these quality objectives cannot always be achieved due to performance obstacles coming from natural and man made sources. For instance, an intensive rainfall in some parts of the service areas or provisional obstacles intercepting the radio link may impair connection. Thus, more efficient coverage area management strategies are required to optimise the quality of service and spectrum resources in wireless communications. To answer this need, the OBANET project developed optically beam-formed base station antennas for addressing dynamic changes in the network. Within this context, high-performance opto-electronic devices and photonic integrated circuits have been generated for the purposes of the optical beam-former. As such, high power Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMIC) driver amplifiers have been developed and packaged. These have been tested for oscillations and displayed excellent performance properties. The chip has been fabricated using a GaAs micrometer wave power process and has a size of approximately 2x3mm. A license agreement is sought and samples for evaluation as well as application support are offered to potential partners. The current commercial GaAs foundry may be further used for chip production. For more information on the OBANET project please visit the project's website: http://ist-obanet.upv.es/(opens in new window)
