A Ku-band CMOS build-in-self-test chip based on phasor-sum detection method for RF beamforming transceivers

A Ku-band build-in-self-test (BIST) chip in CMOS is presented for RF beamforming arrays in 5G mobile communication systems. Since the beamforming array in 5G systems has hundreds of antenna elements, the BIST circuits must be incorporated in the RF chains to be able to accurately detect and control the phase and amplitude of the signal such that the required beam shape and direction can be precisely generated. The BIST based on the phasor-sum detection method is designed in 90 nm CMOS technology at Ku-band. The measurement results show that the relative phase detection error is less than 5.9°, compared with the data directly from the vector network analyzer.