A low-power, low-noise, highly-linear receiver for 122 GHz applications in a SiGe BiCMOS technology

This paper presents a low power receiver front-end for 122 GHz applications designed in a 0.13μm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology featuring HBTs with fT of 250 GHz and fmax of 360 GHz. The receiver comprises of an active down-conversion mixer, an LO buffer, and an IF buffer with integrated baluns for single-ended to differential conversion. The receiver achieves a minimum single sideband noise figure of 10 dB, a conversion gain greater than 19 dB and an input-referred 1-dB compression point of -7 dBm at an IF of 10 MHz for input signals between 121 and 126 GHz. The circuit consumes only 50 mW from a 3.3 V power supply. The LO residual power at the RF port is less than -30 dBm.