An 8-GHz Beamforming Transmitter IC in 130-nm CMOS

An 8-GHz beamforming transmitter IC has been designed in a 130-nm CMOS process. Two power amplifiers with independently controllable phase enable the beamforming. The phases are digitally controllable over the full 360deg range, which is accomplished by binary weighting of quadrature phase signals in the power amplifiers. The quadrature phase signals are generated by a quadrature voltage controlled oscillator followed by a buffer, which serves as an isolation between the power amplifiers and the oscillator. The chip contains seven on-chip differential inductors, and consumes a total of 47 mA from a 1.0 V supply. The measured output power is -3 dBm for each power amplifier.