An uncooled very low noise Schottky diode receiver front-end for middle atmospheric ozone and carbon monoxide measurements

Journal article, 2006

The paper describes an uncooled front-end of the Schottky diode receiver system, which may be applied for observations of middle atmospheric ozone and carbon monoxide thermal emission lines at frequencies 110.8 GHz and 115.3 GHz, respectively. The mixer of the front-end has utilized high-quality Schottky diodes that allowed us to reduce the mixer conversion loss. The combination of the mixer and an ultra-low-noise IF amplifier in the one integrated unit has resulted in double-sideband (DSB) receiver noise temperature of 260 K at a local oscillator (LO) frequency of 113.05 GHz in the instantaneous IF band from 1.7 to 2.7 GHz. This is the lowest noise temperature ever reported for an uncooled ozone receiver system with Schottky diode mixers. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.