Electrical engineering

Physics

Channel (broadcasting)

Transistor

Bandwidth (computing)

Wideband

CMOS

Noise figure

Engineering

Voltage

Amplifier

Local oscillator

RF power amplifier

Electronic engineering

Computer science

Transmitter

Gilbert cell

BiCMOS

Transceiver

Baseband

Radio frequency

Telecommunications

Transimpedance amplifier

IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits

In this paper, a fully integrated wideband 240-GHz transceiver front-end, supporting BPSK modulation scheme, with on-chip antenna is demonstrated in SiGe:C BiCMOS technology with f T /f max = 300/500 GHz and local backside etching option. Within the transmitter, the upconversion is provided by fundamental mixing using a modified Gilbert cell mixer driven by a multiplier-by-eight local oscillator (LO) chain. The transmitter achieves a 3-dB RF bandwidth of 35 GHz with a saturated output power of -0.8 dBm. The down converter is equipped with a mixer first architecture. The mixer is designed utilizing a transimpedance amplifier as load for enhanced noise and bandwidth performance. For dc-coupled receiver, two dc offset cancellation loops are implemented within the receiver chain. It achieves a 3-dB RF bandwidth of 55 GHz, minimum single-sideband noise figure (SSB NF) of 13.4 dB, and a gain of 32 dB with 25-dB gain control. A wideband on-chip double-folded dipole antenna and an on-board optical lens are utilized to demonstrate a wireless link achieving 20- and 25-Gb/s data rates at bit error rates (BERs) of 6.3 × 10 -6 and 2.2 × 10 -4 , respectively, across a distance of 15 cm. The transmitter and receiver consume 375 and 575 mW, respectively, which correspond to power efficiencies of 15 pJ/bit for the transmitter and 23 pJ/bit for the receiver. They occupy a silicon area of 4.3 and 4.5 mm 2 , respectively.

Wideband 240-GHz Transmitter and Receiver in BiCMOS Technology With 25-Gbit/s Data Rate