Analysis of a built-in test architecture for direct-conversion SiGe millimeter-wave receiver frontends

This paper presents an architecture and corresponding analysis of a direct built-in test of integrated millimeter-wave radar receiver frontends. The proposed test is able to evaluate the gain of the device as well as its noise figure. Focus of this work is the prediction of the accuracy of the tested performance parameters during the design of embedded test solutions. The introduced architecture provides an advantage for cost-efficent development of next generation multigigahertz receiver frontends. The proposed test system is theoretically analyzed as well as evaluated in a simulation environment.