A fully integrated 120-GHz six-port receiver front-end in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology

A fully integrated six-port receiver front-end at 120 GHz center frequency including a low-noise-amplifier, a passive six-port network, a VCO, and four direct converters is presented in this publication. The overall architecture of the designed six-port receiver is analyzed and fundamental theory of the receiver given. The design of the six-port building blocks is described and measurement results are presented. All circuits have been fabricated in a 0.13μm 300-GHz f_T SiGe BiCMOS technology. The fully integrated receiver consumes 85.9 rnA from a 3.3-V supply and occupies an area of 1.03mm². The receiver includes a VCO with a center frequency of 117.15 GHz, a tuning range of 2.7 GHz, and a phase noise of -86 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The LNA shows a gain of 12 dB, a 3-dB bandwidth of 30 GHz at a power consumption of 9.2 rnA. The six-port core has a conversion gain of 3.6 dB, a P_1dB of -12 dBm, and a power consumption of 28 rnA. The overall receiver shows a conversion gain of 2.4 dB at 120 GHz and P_1dB of -17 dBm.