Research Of Silicon-Based Millimeter-wave Amplifier And Mixer ICs In Receiver Front-End

With the rapid development of wireless communication technology,the millimeter-wave?mm-wave?bands have attracted extensive attention from both the academia and the industry.The relevant products and applications have been quickly merged with huge market potential.Nowadays,benefiting from the continuous improvement of CMOS processes,the characteristic frequency?f_t?of transistors has been able to meet the design requirements of most mm-wave ICs.Meanwhile,compared with the traditional III-V compound semiconductors,silicon-based process has the advantage of low cost,easy integration with digital circuits,which is the focus and the trend in research and implementation of mm-wave receiver front-end systems.In this dissertation,the silicon-based mm-wave receiver front-ends and the key circuit blocks?amplifier and mixer?are studied in depth.The main research contents are divided into four parts:1.The research of the silicon-based broadband variable gain amplifier?VGA?in mm-wave systems.This dissertation proposes the cell-based design method for the optimization of gain-bandwidth?GBW?,the bandwidth expansion technology of variable gain unit and the reconfigurable DC-offset cancellation?DCOC?.Meanwhile,this dissertation analyzes the enhancement of bandwidth,gain and gain control range.Fabricated in 90-nm CMOS,the proposed VGA realizes a gain control range of 66dB?-6⁶0 dB?while achieving a high data-rate of 5Gbps with the output data peak-to-peak jitter less than 39 ps.Besides,the reconfigurable DCOC with a tunable lower-cutoff frequency?f_L?from DC to 300 kHz can make an optimum compromise between bit error rate?BER?and signal-noise ratio?SNR?according to the specified baseband standard.2.The research of the mm-wave broadband high-linearity low-noise mixer based on the transformer-coupling cascode topology?TCCT?.To improve the linearity and noiset performance of traditional Gilbert mixer at mm-wave,a noise-reduction transformer with harmonic suppression is analyzed and proposed.Meanwhile,this transformer provides a great freedom for the choice of biases in transconductance stage and switching stage.Thus,linearity and noise performance can be further improved by optimizing the bias conditions of the two stages(the transconductance stage can be biased at the zero crossing point of g_m3 without affecting the optimal noise bias of switching stage).Besides,this topology can operate at a relatively low supply voltage.Fabricated in 65-nm CMOS,the proposed mixer achieves 3-dB bandwidth ranges from 62 to 90 GHz,a maximum conversion gain of 9.5 dB,a SSB NF of 9.2 dB and an input P_1dB of-3.8 dBm at 77GHz.3.To solve the main problems?DC-offset and I/Q imbalance?of mm-wave direct-conversion receiver,a symmetrical design methodology of I/Q balanced mixer and I/Q imbalance calibartion technique have been proposed in this dissertation.Then,the author designs a 24 GHz receiver front-end for automotive radar applications.Considering that low cost implementation is beneficial to massive popularity of automotive radar,this receiver is designed and fabricated in 0.18?m CMOS.The measurement results show that the receiver achieves a high channel isolation of 48 dB,a LO-RF isolation of 57.8dB and an excellent I/Q balance performance?<2°?.4.Based on the above researches,the silicon-based mm-wave multi-channel receiver front-end system for 5G communication applications has been further studied in this dissertation.A 39 GHz dual-channel heterodyne receiver has been designed by using 65nm CMOS.To meet the requirements of the actual applications,the chip packaging design has also been considered and included in this system.Meanwhile,a digital addressable configuration interface?ACI?is employed.The whole system realizes a maximum gain of 52 dB,a gain control range of 31 dB,a NF of 4.2 dB and an input P_1dB of 8.1dBm.The receiver occupies a silicon area of 2.8×2.2 mm² included all pads and consumes a total dc power of 370 mW.