| Extremely high frequency receivers can be utilized for applications that require very high bandwidth. A vertical silicon nanowire surrounding gate field effect transistor (SGFET) provides full gate control over the channel to minimize short channel effects as well as high unity-current-gain frequency (ftau). This makes this type of SGFET an ideal candidate for design of an extremely high frequency receiver. This thesis presents the design and characterization of a fully integrated 150 GHz homodyne receiver front-end using vertical silicon nanowire SGFETs. The receiver, with 1 GHz bandwidth about an operating frequency of 150 GHz, provides 35 dB of voltage gain and 4.6 dB of noise figure.;Individual blocks of the receiver, including a low-noise amplifier (LNA), a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), and a mixer, were first designed and characterized. Issues related to LNA design, such as poor isolation and output matching, were minimized by employing proper design techniques. Phase noise in the VCO was minimized by employing a noise filter circuit. A simple single-balanced mixer was used to down-convert the RF signal with reasonably good conversion gain. |
