EMB8308 is a CMOS silicon on insulator (SOI), 24GHz to 44GHz, mmWave 5.5G/6G SATCOM beamformer, with IF up/down conversion and an on-chip frequency synthesizer. The EMB8308 drives 4 horizontal and 4 vertical polarized antennas via independent RFV and RFH bond pads.

A 52MHz external reference signal is required to generate LO signal. In transmit mode, the signal at the IF input pin is up-converted to RF by mixing with the LO signal. This RF signal drives 8 independent transmit channels via the 1:8 power splitter. The transmit channels feed the 8 RFV/RFH antenna ports. In receive mode, the RF input signals pass through the 8 receive channels and combine via the 8:1 power combiner. The combined RF signal is down-converted to IF by mixing with LO signal to drive the IF pin.

In both modes, each transmit and receive channel includes a phase shifter (PS) to control the phase, and variable gain amplifiers (VGAs) to control the amplitude. The phase shifter has a full 360º phase adjustment range in either transmit or receive mode, with 10 bits of resolution.

The RFV and RFH bond pads can be connected directly to a 5.5G/6G SATCOM mmWave antenna array. The EMB8308 can be programmed using a 3-wire serial port interface (SPI). Various SPI modes are available to enable fast startup and control during normal operation. The amplitude and phase for each channel can be set individually or multi- channels can be programmed simultaneously using the on-chip SPI for beamforming.