UWB in Millimeter Wave Band With Pulsed ILO

A simple but efficient transmitter for ultra-wide-band impulse radio wavelet generator in millimeter-wave band is presented. It is suitable for RADAR, gigabit wireless personal area network, and localization applications. This front-end involves a subharmonic injection-locked oscillator driven by a pulse generator (PG) with fast transition time (<25 ps). Its frequency oscillation is locked on one of the numerous harmonic components generated by the PG around 30 GHz. This allows to obtain a stable pulse-to-pulse phase condition and a very low phase noise (<-110 dBc/Hz@100 kHz). Two monolithic microwave integrated circuits have been designed using a commercial pseudomorphic high-electron mobility transistor foundry process (ft = 100 GHz). The first one is a PG with position and width modulation capabilities, and the second one is an oscillator with a 30-GHz free-running output frequency. The start of the oscillations is studied, using the external quality factor as main factor.