Thales 38 GHz Transceivers

[OH2FTG]

So I was given a Thales 38GHz tranceiver unit by a friend.
for 23GHz/26GHz models there is this thread http://www.vklogger.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=9133

The box included:
The Thales Tranceiver unit, model TGTR 38 "ED-0133-0" "UT 6966-AA"
Suspected TX IF converter with sticker "2.84TX"
Suspected RX IF converter with sticker "4.1RX"
Suspected AGC(?) board, with sticker "EB-0001-8 AGC"
Two ARUGS-ET model(?) 1IW28-23-1 37-40GHz WR28 isolators
Two WR28 90* bends
3 piece WR28 to round 5.35mm waveguide transition
The original diplerx for frequencies 37.56-38.18GHz and 38.86-39.44GHz
And most of the orignal cables.

Did some measuring today with the 38GHz Thales tranceiver.
The LO input has reasonable returnloss from 10.2GHz to 12.8GHz, a perfect fit for a Elcom synth.

The TX IF had dips in it's return loss on 2.4GHz and 4GHz. During testing we drove it at 3.6GHz without problems.

The tranceiver was powered up and transmit power measured.
The measuring setup had a 30dB wr28 attenuator right at the tx output, it was then connected to a HP 8564E input with some flexible wr28 waveguide, a wr28 to 2.92mm 'K' transition and then with the required amount of adapters to fit that to the spectrum analyzer APC-2.4 input.


A HP 86364B signal generator was used as the LO and Advantest R3763B VNA was set for 0Hz span and used as the TX IF generator.
LO port was driven with +8dBm as further increase in power did not result in more power output.
TX IF port was driven with -10dBm at 3.6GHz, higher input did not result in more output power.

+25dBm poweroutput was measured from 36.4-39.6GHz. This should make this a nice LO for 76GHz experiments.

Some pictures of the measurement process:
http://imgur.com/a/KwNPa

The original wire colors for the tranceiver DC power plug are:
Red for +8V TX control
White for -12V
Black for ground
Violet for +5V

Inside both the TX IF and RX IF converters are M/A-Com 2.5GHz to 6GHz mixers, two hairpin filters and LMX2325 controlled LO.
The AGC board was boring inside, just osme MMIC amplifiers and some "diplex filter" inside. The AGC board might have done the baseband TX and RX IF separation in the ODU.

More to come!