A Highly Compact Active Wideband Balun With Impedance Transformation in SiGe BiCMOS

Author

Godara, Balwant ; Fabre, Alain

Author_Institution

Inst. Superieur d´´Electron. de Paris, Paris

Volume

56

Issue

1

fYear

2008

Firstpage

22

Lastpage

30

Abstract

A new conveyor-based single-ended to differential balun is proposed. Thanks to the quasi-absence of passive components, this is an extremely size-efficient balun (0.036 ). The use of a new impedance-matching technique makes this balun the first transistor-based solution with controllable port impedances. Fabricated in a 0.35-mum SiGe BiCMOS technology with f_T=45 GHz, the balun shows the following performance: wideband impedance matching at all three ports, good balance between the two outputs (better than 3 dB in amplitude and 13deg in phase) over frequency bands extending from 0 to 3 GHz, linear operation for powers up to input powers of -2 dBm, and stability against temperature and process variations.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; UHF integrated circuits; VHF circuits; baluns; impedance matching; BiCMOS; differential balun; frequency 0 GHz to 3 GHz; frequency 45 GHz; highly compact active wideband balun; impedance transformation; impedance-matching technique; size 0.35 mum; transistor-based solution; BiCMOS integrated circuits; Circuit stability; Germanium silicon alloys; Impedance matching; Radio frequency; Reflection; Silicon germanium; Temperature; Transceivers; Wideband; Active balun; BiCMOS; RF circuits; current conveyors; wideband;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9480

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMTT.2007.911932

Filename

4385725