A 170-190 GHz Two-Elements Phased-Array Receiver Front-End for Low-Power Applications

This paper presents a two-elements phased-array receiver (Rx) front-end for low-power applications from 170 GHz to 190 GHz. The front-end is implemented in a 130 nm SiGe BiC-MOS process and it consists of RF amplifiers, vector-modulator phase shifters, downconversion mixer, baseband amplifier and frequency multiplier for the LO generation. The design is optimized towards low power consumption and reduced layout complexity via the use of inductive peaking and single-ended architecture for the RF amplifier and the vector-modulator, via a Wilkinson power combiner of the received signals, and with a micromixer topology for the downconversion. Furthermore, the generation of the LO signal at 180 GHz is also performed on-chip with a times-6 multiplier. The single-sideband differential downconversion gain of a single array element is 20 dB. The total power consumption of the system is 185 mW, while the -3 dB frequency band of the response spans from 170 GHz to 190 GHz.