Design Of Silicon-based CMOS Millimeter-Wave Front-End Key Circuits

Millimeter-wave(mm-wave)integrated circuit has broad prospect in high speed/wideband communication,radar,detection and so on.Based on silicon CMOS,it is possible to design mm-wave front-end circuits with low cost and low power consumption while the CMOS technology is in process.However,Many factors pose a challenge to circuit design in mm-wave frequency band,especially above 100 GHz,such as substrate losses,low effective transconductance,low breakdown voltage,lack of accurate device model and so on.The optimization of the structure of passive elements and active components,studies on mm-wave circuits design methods and realization high frequency band in mm-wave become a hot pot in the world.In order to design mm-wave transceiver front-end based on CMOS process,this thesis studies on mm-wave integrated circuit and get some achievements.1)It is the first time to adopt MOS capacitance neutralization technique to design a low noise amplifier(LNA)with the operation frequency ranges from 110 GHz to 147 GHz in D-band(110-170 GHz).The bandwidth is broadened by using inductor to adjust the main pole of each stage of LNA.The 3-dB bandwidth is 37 GHz with the small signal gain up to 14.9 dB and the minimum noise of 7.8 dB.Comparison with current literature,this LNA achieve good performance in gain bandwidth products.2)A OOK-PA(power amplifier)with high reliability is studied and designed by using the 65 nm CMOS process.The measure results show that the operation frequency of this PA ranges from 126 GHz to 141.5 GHz(15.5 GHz 3-dB bandwidth).The small signal gain is 5.5 dB.The post-layout simulation results show that OP1dB is 4.2 dBm with saturated power of 9 dBm and PAE of 5.2%.This PA supports the OOK signal with 20 Gbps of transmission rate3)The technique for designing an amplifier with MOS of same size in each stage is studied and the drive amplifier(DA)is realized by using this technique based on 65 nm CMOS process.The measure results show that the operation frequency of this DA ranges from 93.9 GHz to 105.6 GHz and the maximum small signal gain is 9 dB.Based on 90 nm CMOS process,a low power consumption DA is proposed.The measure results show that the operation frequency of this DA ranges from 45 GHz to 57 GHz and the maximum small signal gain is 7.2 dB with DC power consumption of 5.52mA.4)A inductor with new patterned ground shields(PGS)is proposed to improve the phase noise of voltage-controlled oscillator(VCO).The simulation results show that the quality factor is about 15.7 of the proposed inductor,which is higher than 13.9 of the same style inductor supplied by foundry.Based on 65 nm CMOS process,a 126.6-128.1 GHz VCO is realized by using this proposed inductor.Meanwhile,by adopting isolation varactor and switch inductor technique,A 128.76-129.56 GHz VCO is realized based on 65 nm CMOS process.The measure results show that the output power of this VCO ranges from-10.6 dBm to-11.8 dBm.5)The phase-and amplitude imbalance of normal balun are starts to deteriorate while the operating frequency is above 200 GHz,and this imbalance makes the isolation of mixer bad.A new planar transmission line balun is proposed in this thesis.In the frequency band from 0 GHz to 300 GHz,the phase-and amplitude imbalance are 0.015 and 4.5°,respectively.Based on 65 nm CMOS process,a 270-290 GHz passive double-balanced down-conversion mixer is proposed by using this new balun.Furthermore,to solve the substrate loss of the 65 nm CMOS and MOS of low gain for D-band,a 120 GHz-150 GHz double-balance down-conversion mixer is designed.Conversion gain for intermediate frequency(IF)of 0 GHz-2 GHz is larger than 1.5 dB.6)Based on the above studies and the circuits design,a 138.68-139.39 GHz OOK transmitter is proposed in this thesis.And this transmitter supports the OOK signal with 20 Gbps of transmission rate.Furthermore,a mm-Wave zero-IF receiver is designed.Given LO signal of 10 dBm power,the receiver works for the frequency of 120 GHz-150 GHz.The gain of the I-or the Q-path is up to 18.5 dB for the 0 GHz-2 GHz IF.