Sub-Orbital Flight Demonstration of a 183/540–600 GHz Hybrid CMOS-InP and CMOS-Schottky-MEMS Limb-Sounder
Adrian Tang (University of California, California Institute of Technology)
M. Alonso (TU Delft - Tera-Hertz Sensing)
Yanghyo Kim (Steven’s Institute of Technology)
Yan Zhang (University of California)
Theodore James Reck (Virginia Diodes Inc.)
Cecile Jung-Kubiak (California Institute of Technology)
Deacon Nemchick (California Institute of Technology)
Logan Dyer (California Institute of Technology)
Gabriel Virbila (University of California)
Goutam Chattopadhyay (California Institute of Technology)
Mau Chung Frank Chang (University of California)
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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 H 2 O 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 O 3 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.
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