Pacific Millimeter Products

Pacific Millimeter Products (PMP) was organized in 1984 to fulfill a need for a low cost alternative to expensive millimeter wave components. The initial product line was a series of broadband detectors and harmonic mixers. This line has now expanded to include upconverters, downconverters, filters, frequency multipliers, integrated receiver front-... ends and many custom designed integrated assemblies. Almost every item produced by PMP involves the use of a printed suspended substrate circuit. While circuit losses in suspended substrate are higher than those in waveguide, the small size obtained through the use of this medium often compensates for the additional loss incurred. Components that can be integrated in suspended stripline include low pass, bandpass and notch filters, diplexers and multiplexers, balanced mixers, frequency multipliers, power splitters, directional and non-directional couplers. Use of suspended substrate techniques for complicated circuits can effect a volume reduction of more than 100 over an equivalent waveguide circuit. Applications are now possible that were prohibitively large when implemented with waveguide structures. In 1986 Hewlett-Packard conducted a survey which concluded that PMP detectors had the highest reliability and best customer satisfaction of any millimeter wave detectors available. As a result of this survey, Hewlett-Packard approached PMP to supply detectors and filters as accessories to their 8757 Scalar Network Analyzer to extend the operating range of the analyzer to 110 GHz. The filters remove unwanted harmonics from multiplied millimeter wave source modules to allow high dynamic range measurements when used with the 8757 Scalar Network Analyzer. PMP builds all of the detectors sold by Agilent for frequencies higher than 50 GHz. PMP waveguide detectors are also compatible with Wiltron/Anritsu Scalar Network Analyzers. PMP builds frequency multipliers and harmonic mixers which have been used to extend the frequency range of Wiltron/Anritsu and HP/Agilent Vector ...Read More