Design and Characterization of a D-Band SiGe HBT Front-End for Dicke Radiometers

This paper reports the design and characterization of a D-band front-end receiver, implemented in a 0.13-μm SiGe BiCMOS technology, for use in a directdetection-based Dicke radiometer architecture. The peak responsivity of the Dicke radiometer is 688 MV/W at 130 GHz, and its minimum value is about 82.6 MV/W at 170 GHz. The Dicke switching frequency is 10 kHz. The noise equivalent power of the Dicke radiometer remains below 20fW/Hz
^1/2
at the frequency range of 110-155 GHz, and its minimum value is about 9.3 fW/Hz
^1/2
at 130 GHz. The implemented radiometer achieves an NETD of 0.13K for a back-end integration time of 30ms. Its total chip area is approximately 1.7mm
²
, and the overall quiescent DC power consumption is 33.8 mW. To the authors' best knowledge, the implemented Dicke radiometer achieves the best NETD in the literature.