22-29GHz Ultra-Wideband CMOS Pulse Generator for Collision Avoidance Short Range Vehicular Radar Sensors

The pseudo millimeter wave 22-29GHz ultra-wideband (UWB) is attractive for the applications in short-range (SR) automotive radar sensors in order to contribute to significant reduction of traffic fatalities. Although CMOS is suitable for the short-range radar since processing units can be implemented in the same chip with the UWB front-end building block, it is difficult to operate CMOS pulse generators at such a high frequency. To realize the pseudo-millimeter-wave band using CMOS, we have proposed a new pulse generator consisting of a series of delay cells and edge combiners with waveform shaping. As a result of measurement using 90nm CMOS technology, 1Gbps pulses are successfully generated with a power consumption of 1.4mW at a supply voltage of 0.9V. This result is the key technology for a one-chip SR cost effective radar sensors.