The Research And Design Of CMOS Millimeter-Wave Low-Noise Amplifier And Mixer

With the rapid development of Multi-Gb/s point-to-point high-speed link, high-capacity wireless local area networks (WLAN), wireless personal area networks (WPAN), satellite communications, automotive radar, millimeter-wave(MMW) imaging applications et al., the market of millimeter-wave integrated circuits grows up increasingly. CMOS has the advantages of low cost, low power consumption and is compatible with the base-band IC module, which make it easy to implement system-wide low-cost manufacturing and large-scale applications. Consequently, millimeter-wave CMOS integrated circuits become a hot topic both in academics and industries. This dissertation focuses on the research and design of the key circuit modules of millimeter-wave frontend:wideband low noise amplifiers (LNAs) and mixers.For the millimeter-wave CMOS wideband low noise amplifier, the operation principle of the low noise amplifier is analyzed in detail in this dissertation. In order to research the wideband impedance match, this dissertation discussed on LC-ladder match, noise canceling distributed match, balanced match, shunt peaking, degeneration Q, unilateralization and neutralization. And some comparison and analysis are also given for their pros and cons. In addition, this dissertation discussed on the NF of LNA with regard to the order of noise match and power match, and derived the noise formula at the two case. Due to the effect of parasitic capacitance, the gain and noise performance of cascode amplifier will be degradation at the higher frequency. To relieve the degradation, this presented LNA utilizes the noise reduction and gain boosting technique. The operation principle of noise reduction and gain boosting are analyzed in detail. Moreover, the dissertation also discusses the gain and stability with regard to the noise reduction inductor in the cascode amplifier, and the noise figure and stability with regard to the gain boosting inductor. The analysis is verified by a 60 GHz low noise amplifier in 90-nm CMOS technology. The fabricated LNA has a peak gain of 19.8 dB,3-dB bandwidth of 10.5 GHz and NF of 4.5 dB at 61.5 GHz. Additionally, the reverse isolation of this LNA is better than 50 dB at all frequency. The input and output return losses are both below-10 dB. The total chip size is 0.36 mm2 including testing pads.For the millimeter-wave CMOS wideband mixer, the operation principle of mixer is analyzed in detail. This dissertation discussed on single-end mixer, single balanced mixer, dual balanced mixer, distributed mixer, subsampling mixer and subharmonic mixer. Several comparison and analysis are also given for their pros and cons. To achieve ultra-broadband, the design and optimization of distributed mixer are discussed in detail. Due to the effect of the pad’s parasitic capacitance, the return loss of the distributed mixer based on uniform artificial transmission line is not good at the higher frequency. In order to improve the return loss of the distributed mixer, this dissertation proposed a novel distributed mixer with the capacitance compensation terminal. The analysis is verified by a millimeter-wave mixer in 0.18-μm CMOS technology. This mixer consumes zero dc power and exhibits a measured conversion loss of 9.4～17 dB from 3 to 40 GHz with a compact size of 0.78 mm2. The LO and RF input return losses are smaller than-10 dB from 3 to 40 GHz. The input referred 1-dB compression point is higher than 4dBm at the fixed IF frequency of 500 MHz and RF frequency of 23 GHz. The measured RF-to-LO, RF-to-IF and LO-to-IF isolations are better than 21 dB,38 dB and 45 dB, respectively.In order to futher improve the conversion gain of the distributed mixer, this dissertation proposed the other novel distributed mixer with the power combining amplifier. This mixer combines the forward with the reverse IF output current of the traditional distributed mixer, and then amplified by the IF amplifier in phase. The analysis is verified by a millimeter-wave mixer in 0.18-μm CMOS technology. The mixer achieves a wide measured conversion gain of -0.2～4dB from 8 to 40GHz. With the low-pass filter, the mixer exhibits excellent LO-to-IF and RF-to-IF isolation which are both better than 50dB. The DC power consumption of the IF amplifier is less than 32mW.