Description of work

RF-MEMS and Gallium Nitride (GaN) transistors represent a key enabling technology for many applications. Satellite communication and radar systems, where increasing functionality, better performance at smaller size and power consumption are highly attractive features, will dramatically benefit from a full integration of GaN MMICs and RF-MEMS based technologies onto the same substrate.

Furthermore, much interest is increasingly directed onto the development of improved solid-state devices able to guarantee improved RF output power and efficiency. Increasing RF power per unit device would greatly simplify power-combining techniques and permit smaller and lower cost transmitters, for both UWB communication and radar applications. It is worth mentioning that, in order to guarantee that the said enabling technology will be useful for future market application, all the technology processes to be developed for RF-MEMS fabrication must be compliant with those adopted for GaN RF device production. For this reason, in the SATURNE project all the most relevant universities and companies have been involved, in such a way as to ensure real production capability and competitive costs for any future requests of SME.

There are five discrete but interrelated technical work packages (WP1 – WP5), going from development activities (WP1 – WP4) to demonstration activities in WP5. WP6 is dedicated to the exploitation of the results and technological transfer of the achievements and WP7 to the management of the project.

The detailed structure of the SATURNE project is presented below: