Research On 60GHz Millimeter-wave Power Source In CMOS Technology

In recent years, a bandwidth of 7GHz around 60GHz is allowed for commercial development to achieve ultra high-speed short-range wireless communications, which booms great enthusiasm from major wireless companies and research institutions to develop the 60GHz communications technology. Among them, the use of CMOS integrated circuit design has significant low cost and high integration advantages and become a research hotspot in 60GHz radio frequency technology. With low fT and fmax, the limited output power of CMOS circuit is a major disadvantage. This paper makes a research on a novel 60GHz millimeter-wave power source based on CMOS technology, the power source is designed in CMOS integrated circuit in order to obtain high output power. The power source consists of annular standing wave oscillator, power amplifier and power synthesizer. The annular standing wave oscillator is enclosed of four half-wave oscillators, which obtain four differential signals of the same frequency, phase and magnitude. The differential signals is amplified by the radio frequency power amplifier, and then output to theλ/4 resonator to couple in a rectangular cavity resonator working in TE101 mode. We can obtain high synthetic output power with many rectangular cavity resonators to solve the problem of low output power in CMOS technology. The first part of this paper describes the overall structure of the power source, this part in-depth study on the circuit structure and basic theory of the annular standing wave oscillator and power combiner. The second part investigates the basic theory and design of power amplifier, including the classification, the analysis of key performance indicators and design methods of the power amplifier. The third part focuses on the design of 30GHz power amplifier in 0.18um CMOS process. The amplifier is design to maximumly amplify the output power of standing wave oscillator in linearly. The design includes the selection of amplifier structure, the optimization and simulation of schematic and layout. Finally, this part designs a 30GHzλ/4 standing wave resonator and analyzes its interconnection with the power amplifier. Basing on load-pull technique obtains the optimal output impedance, the 30GHz class-A power amplifier delivers 9.3dBm output power with OdBm input, gain is 10.14dB, input 1dB compression point is 0.4dBm with power added efficiency of 13.2%, and power consumption is 57.6mW.