Local oscillator

Transmitter

Quantum mechanics

Phase (matter)

Engineering

Noise figure

Quadrature amplitude modulation

Radio frequency

Amplifier

Antenna (radio)

Phase noise

Physics

Bit error rate

Electronic engineering

Transceiver

Channel (broadcasting)

Chip

Phased array

CMOS

Electrical engineering

IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits

This paper presents a 28-GHz CMOS four-element phased-array transceiver chip for the fifth-generation mobile network (5G) new radio (NR). The proposed transceiver is based on the local-oscillator (LO) phase-shifting architecture, and it achieves quasi-continuous phase tuning with less than 0.2-dB radio frequency (RF) gain variation and 0.3° phase error. Accurate beam control with suppressed sidelobe level during beam steering could be supported by this work. At 28 GHz, a single-element transmitter-mode output P1dB of 15.7 dBm and a receiver-mode noise figure (NF) of 4.1 dB are achieved. The eight-element transceiver modules developed in this work are capable of scanning the beam from -50° to +50° with less than -9-dB sidelobe level. A saturated equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of 39.8 dBm is achieved at 0° scan. In a 5-m overthe-air measurement, the proposed module demonstrates the first 512 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation in the 28-GHz band. A data stream of 6.4 Gb/s in 256-QAM could be supported within a beam angle of ±50°. The achieved maximum data rate is 15 Gb/s in 64-QAM. The proposed transceiver chip consumes 1.2 W/chip in transmitter mode and 0.59 W/chip in receiver mode.

A 28-GHz CMOS Phased-Array Transceiver Based on LO Phase-Shifting Architecture With Gain Invariant Phase Tuning for 5G New Radio