An amplitude-based phase detector at MM-wave frequency range

A phase detector (PD) suitable for mm-wave frequency range is presented. The proposed solution creates and combines quadrature phase components of the input signals and performs amplitude measurement in order to measure phase difference between the input signals. Phase detection is done at the carrier frequency, hence, it can be used in a mm-wave phase locked loop (PLL) or delay locked loop (DLL) to reduce power consumption by eliminating frequency divider(s) required in alternative approaches. The phase detector was implemented using the TSMC 40nm LP CMOS process and measured using a 4-port vector network analyzer. PD gain is more than 3dB amplitude difference between output signals for less than 2psec skew between input signals over 10GHz bandwidth centered at 38GHz.