A 120 GHz Fully Integrated 10 Gb/s Short-Range Star-QAM Wireless Transmitter With On-Chip Bondwire Antenna in 45 nm Low Power CMOS

In this paper, a fully integrated D-band transmitter with on-chip dipole bondwire antenna implemented in 45 nm low-power CMOS is presented. The purpose of this 120 GHz wireless connector is to provide a high-speed short-range wireless communication link. On-chip frequency generation, insensitive to VCO pulling, is integrated together with a direct carrier quadrature vector modulator, ASK modulator, four-stage differential transformer-coupled power amplifier, and bondwire antenna. A 2⁹-1-bit PRBS generator, capable of generating three parallel bit streams at a clock frequency of 8 GHz, is integrated on the same chip for measurement purposes. The transmitter is capable of efficiently generating BPSK, QPSK, and Star-QAM modulation formats. Data transmission over a distance up to 1 m is achieved for data rates as high as 2 Gb/s. For shorter distances, data rates up to 10 Gb/s are measured.