V-Band Beam-Steering ASK Transmitter and Receiver Using BCB-Based System-on-Package Technology on Silicon Mother Board

We report V-band fully integrated planar beam-steering Amplitude-Shift-Keying (ASK) transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) system using advanced thin-film technology on a silicon (Si) mother board. BCB-on-Si System-on-Package (SOP) technology allows Rotman lens, patch antennas, and other passive elements to be integrated on a Si substrate together with active circuits. All MMIC chipsets are flip-chipped on a BCB substrate. Tx beam-steering is achieved by a combination of a SP3T switch and a Rotman lens terminated with the embedded resistors. The measured Tx antenna gain is 17.5 dBi and the effective isotropic radiated power is 26 dBm. The Tx module can steer the beam to three different directions of 0^° and ±12^° in the H-plane. A wireless link was successfully demonstrated at a data rate of 2 Gb/s with less than 10^-5 bit error rate.