Reliability study under DC stress on mmW LNA, Mixer and VCO

Author

Ighilahriz, S. ; Cacho, F. ; Moquillon, L. ; Razafimandimby, S. ; Blanchet, F. ; Morelle, J. ; Corrao, N. ; Huard, V. ; Garcia, P. ; Arnaud, C. ; Fournier, J.M. ; Benech, P.

Author_Institution

STMicroelectron., Crolles, France

fYear

2012

fDate

15-19 April 2012

Abstract

A reliability study under DC stress has been conducted on a low noise amplifier (LNA), a mixer and a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). Both mmW blocks were designed with heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) 0.13μm SiGe process from STMicroelectronics. Regarding simulations and HBT degradation studies, DC stresses were defined to provide HBT degradation within the mmW blocks. S parameters were characterized for the LNA; conversion gain and low frequency noise (LFN) were measured for the mixer; oscillation frequency and phase noise were respectively characterized and simulated. LNA and mixer are designed for 77 GHz automotive radar applications and the VCO is designed for 60 GHz wHDMI standard. Limited degradations on mmW blocks characteristics were observed for significant stress conditions covering a time to fail (TTF) of 10years.

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; bipolar MIMIC; integrated circuit reliability; low noise amplifiers; millimetre wave amplifiers; millimetre wave mixers; millimetre wave oscillators; multimedia communication; road vehicle radar; voltage-controlled oscillators; DC stress; SiGe; automotive radar application; frequency 60 GHz; frequency 77 GHz; heterojunction bipolar transistor; low noise amplifier; millimeter wave LNA; millimeter wave VCO; millimeter wave mixer; reliability study; size 0.13 mum; time to fail; voltage controlled oscillator; wHDMI standard; Degradation; Frequency measurement; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Integrated circuit modeling; Mixers; Stress; Voltage-controlled oscillators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), 2012 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Anaheim, CA

ISSN

1541-7026

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1678-2

Electronic_ISBN

1541-7026

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IRPS.2012.6241889

Filename

6241889