A 16-element W-band phased array transceiver chipset with flip-chip PCB integrated antennas for multi-gigabit data links

This paper describes the design and implementation of a W-band phased array system with integrated PCB antennas capable of multi-gigabit spectrally-efficient wireless communication. The chipset is manufactured in a 0.18µm SiGe BiCMOS technology with fT/fMAX of 240/270GHz and is flip-chipped onto an organic PCB with integrated antenna arrays. Each chip is equipped with 16-transmit/4-receive or 16-receive/4-transmit calibrated phase shifter elements, direct up- and down-converters plus a half-rate phase locked loop. Each transceiver IC operates from 1.5V and 2.5V supplies and consumes 5.5W and 4.5W in transmit and receive mode respectively. The transmitter EIRP is 34dBm in each polarization. A 4.8Gb/s QPSK wireless link in each polarization is demonstrated at a distance of 20-meters.