Package Integration and System Performance Analysis of Glass-Based Passive Components for 5G New Radio Millimeter-Wave Modules

In this paper, package integration of glass–based passive components for 5G new radio (NR) millimeter–wave (mm wave) bands and an analysis of their system performance are presented. Passive components such as diplexers and couplers covering 5G NR mm wave bands n257, n258 and n260 are modeled, designed, fabricated and characterized individually along with their integrated versions. Non–contiguous diplexers are designed using three different types of filters, hairpin, interdigital and edge–coupled, and combined with a broadband coupler to emulate a power detection and control circuitry block in an RF transmitter chain. A panel–compatible semi–additive patterning (SAP) process is utilized to form high–precision redistribution layers (RDLs) on laminated glass substrate, onto which fine features with tight tolerance are added to fabricate these structures. The diplexers exhibit low insertion loss, low VSWR and high isolation, and have a small footprint. A system performance analysis using a co–simulation technique is presented for the first time to quantify the distortion in amplitude and phase produced by the fabricated passive component block in terms of error vector magnitude (EVM). Moreover, the scalability of this approach to compare similar passive components based on their specifications and signatures using a system–level performance metric such as EVM is discussed.