Sub-Orbital Flight Demonstration of a 183/540-600 GHz Hybrid CMOS-InP and CMOS-Schottky-MEMS Limb-Sounder

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 H2O 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 O3 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.

Automated summary

This paper presents an overview of a sub-orbital flight demonstration with a limb-sounding instrument aboard a stratospheric ballooncraft, using 183 GHz and 540-600 GHz bands for stratospheric H2O and O3 soundings respectively. The instrument features excellent sensitivity and low power consumption, with hybrid CMOS-InP receiver architecture for the 183 GHz band and a combination of CMOS local oscillator, GaAs Schottky mixer, and MEMS RF switch for the 540-600 GHz channel.