A 400-GHz Efficient Radiator and OOK Transceiver for Multi-Gb/s Wireless Communication in Silicon

This article introduces an efficient high-power radiator at 400 GHz and a fully integrated transceiver supporting OOK modulation for high-speed wireless communication using 90-nm SiGe BiCMOS. The reverse recovery of silicon p-i-n diodes is used to design a frequency quadrupler that generates high power efficiently at 400 GHz. By mutually interlocking and combining the power from two such quadruplers, we design a 400-GHz radiator. The proposed design achieves a peak effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of +20.6- and −5.8-dBm radiated power at 398 GHz with 0.2% dc-to-THz radiation efficiency. This is the highest reported efficiency, and THz power radiated per element above 320 GHz. Using the p-i-n diode quadruplers as the LO, we design a 400-GHz OOK transmitter and receiver with on-chip antennas. The transmitter uses a multiplier-last approach and has an EIRP of +17 dBm while consuming 84-mW dc power. The receiver uses fundamental-driven passive mixer architecture to achieve a noise figure (NF) of 25 dB while consuming 184 mW of dc power. This is the lowest reported NF above 320 GHz. Over-the-air (OTA) measurements are performed for a 5-cm link with OOK modulation. The stand-alone transmitter supports a data rate of 10 Gb/s (8 pJ/bit), and the transmit–receive system supports a data rate of 5 Gb/s (36.8 pJ/bit for the receiver). This is the first demonstration of a fully integrated multi-Gb/s wireless transceiver above 320 GHz in silicon.