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In recent years, the 60 GHz band has gained increased interest due to the large amount of license-free and little used frequency spectrum located in the vicinity of 60 GHz. A particular feature of this band is the high attenuation in air, close to 15 dB/km, regardless of weather conditions. This high attenuation makes the 60 GHz band less suitable for some applications, but for many other systems it is beneficial. Today, the most common commercial 60 GHz product takes the form of license-free and high-speed (1.25 Gbps) wireless Ethernet links.

Due to the high attenuation these links benefit from reduced co-channel interference, and thus shorter cell re-use distance, which is of the utmost importance in a dense urban environment. Another application where the high attenuation is beneficial is secure communication, when the transmitted signal will vanish in the noise floor after a controlled distance determined by the user. Thus, in practice, it will be impossible to overhear the communication outside a well defined range of operation.

To address such applications, Sivers IMA has developed a new broadband 60 GHz converter that is a very versatile building block for high-performance 60 GHz applications. The converter is linear and can thus accommodate almost any modulation scheme that the user desires. It is capable of 64QAM transmission at 60 GHz and consists of one up-converter and one down-converter in a single unit. These two converters work independently and can thus be used in both frequency multiplexed and time multiplexed applications.