• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.30 no.10A
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• pp.965-970
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• 2005

In this paper, SPDT Tx/Rx MMIC switch applicable to IEEE 802.11a WLAN systems is designed and fabricated using a specific designed epitaxial layered pHEMT wafer and ETRI's $0.5{\mu}m$ pHEMT switch process. The SPDT switch exhibits a low insertion loss of 0.68dB, high isolation of 35.64dB, return loss of 13.4dB, power transfer capability of 25dBm, and 3rd order intercept point of 42dBm at frequency of 5.8GHz and control voltage of 0/-3V. The comparison of the measured performances with commercial products based on the GaAs pHEMT technology for low voltage operating at ${\pm}$ 3V/0V shows that the return loss is somewhat inferior to the commercial products and insertion loss is compatible with each other however, isolation characteristics are much better than in conventional chips. Based on these performances, we can conclude that the developed SPDT switch MMIC has an enough potential for IEEE802.11a standard 5 GHz-band wireless LAN applications.