A 70–100GHz direct-conversion transmitter and receiver phased array chipset in 0.18µm SiGe BiCMOS technology

This paper presents a transmitter and receiver phased array chipset fabricated in a 0.18μm SiGe BiCMOS process with f_T/f_MAX of 240/270GHz. Each chip comprises four phased array elements with distributed calibration memory and calibrated direct up and down-conversion mixer chain. Both transmitter and receiver arrays operate from 1.5V and 2.5V power supplies and consume 1W each. Each receive channel has a conversion gain of 33 dB and noise figure of <; 7dB from 75-95GHz. Each transmit channel has a flat saturated output power of >; 5dBm between 70 and 100GHz. The use of the transmitter for highly spectral efficient datacom applications is demonstrated using a 256-QAM signal with 3% EVM and 0dBm output power for each channel at 90GHz.