High-Efficiency 28-/39-GHz Hybrid Transceiver Utilizing Si CMOS and GaAs HEMT for 5G NR Millimeter-Wave Mobile Applications

This letter presents the first demonstration of 5G millimeter-wave hybrid front-ends (FEs) for a phased-array transceiver in order to show efficient transmitter performance with low cost and compact area. The configuration of the proposed hybrid FEs is CMOS-based FEs combined with compact GaAs HEMT-based power-cell array to obtain all the benefits of silicon and III-V technology. The architecture and design method of a millimeter-wave transmitter (TX)/receiver (RX) combiner for antenna-port sharing suitable for the proposed hybrid structure is newly introduced. A developed 29-GHz transceiver FE achieves a linear output power of 14.9 dBm with PAE of 28.5% at SC-FDMA 64QAM 100-MHz EVM of −25 dB in TX mode and noise figure (NF) of 5.5 dB in RX mode. Moreover, a developed 38-GHz transceiver FE achieves a linear output power of 12.8 dBm with PAE of 25.2% at SC-FDMA 64QAM 100-MHz EVM of −25 dB in TX mode and NF of 5.5 dB in RX mode.