An Exploration of Substrate Coupling at K-Band Between a SiGe HBT Power Amplifier and a SiGe HBT Voltage-Controlled-Oscillator

Author

Comeau, Jonathan P. ; Najafizadeh, Laleh ; Andrews, Joel M. ; Prakash, A. P Gnana ; Cressler, John D.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA

Volume

17

Issue

5

fYear

2007

fDate

5/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

349

Lastpage

351

Abstract

This work presents a case study of circuit-to-circuit substrate coupling between a 24-GHz power amplifier (PA) and a 23-GHz voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) implemented in a commercially-available SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor BiCMOS technology. The concurrent operation of these two circuits on the same silicon die results in -33dB of coupling between the PA´s output and the VCO´s output. Different testing configurations are considered to verify the dominant path of the coupling. These results highlight the potential challenges for silicon-based monolithic systems targeting microwave operational frequencies

Keywords

BiCMOS analogue integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MMIC oscillators; MMIC power amplifiers; coupled circuits; heterojunction bipolar transistors; microwave bipolar transistors; substrates; voltage-controlled oscillators; 23 GHz; 24 GHz; HBT power amplifier; HBT voltage-controlled-oscillator; K-Band; SiGe; VCO; circuit-to-circuit substrate coupling; heterojunction bipolar transistor BiCMOS technology; microwave operational frequency; silicon-based monolithic systems; BiCMOS integrated circuits; Circuit testing; Coupling circuits; Germanium silicon alloys; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; K-band; Power amplifiers; Silicon germanium; Voltage; Voltage-controlled oscillators; Heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT); power amplifier (PA); voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2007.895703

Filename

4167910