Frequency modulation

Voltage

Amplitude modulation

Engineering

Noise figure

Bipolar junction transistor

Quadrature amplitude modulation

Radio frequency

Telecommunications

Amplifier

Compatible sideband transmission

Transistor

Physics

Heterojunction bipolar transistor

Bit error rate

Electronic engineering

Channel (broadcasting)

Sideband

Wireless

CMOS

Optoelectronics

Electrical engineering

IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters

This letter presents a 1-m wireless link established with a set of fundamentally operated Tx/Rx direct-conversion in-phase and quadrature (IQ) radio frequency (RF) front-end modules in a 0.13-μm SiGe HBT technology featuring full chipon-board packaging. Using a 16-quadrature amplitude modulation, data rates from 20 to 100 Gb/s with an error vector magnitude from 7% to 17% were achieved at a 1-m distance. Thanks to the new mixer-first Rx, the maximum data rate improved from 90 to 100 Gb/s compared with our previous work using the amplifier-first Rx. The peak performance was reached at 230 GHz. The Tx operates at a 3.5 dB backoff from Psat showing a 3-dB RF bandwidth (BW) of 28 GHz, a Pout of 5 dBm, and an IQ imbalance below 0.7 dB. The Rx features a peak conversion gain of 8 dB, a single-sideband noise figure of 14 dB, a 3-dB RF BW of 26 GHz, and an IQ imbalance below 1 dB. This letter also provides an analysis of the RF front-end imperfections related to the large link BW.

A 16-QAM 100-Gb/s 1-M Wireless Link With an EVM of 17% at 230 GHz in an SiGe Technology