A SiGe Millimeter-Wave Front-End for Remote Sensing and Imaging

This work presents the co-design of a millimeter-wave (mm-wave) switch with a low-noise amplifier (LNA), in which the front-end switch incorporates a transformer-based topology and serves as the LNA input matching network. This mm-wave front-end is implemented in a 0.13μm SiGe BiCMOS technology and achieves a peak gain of 20.1dB, a minimum noise figure of 4.5dB, and a mean isolation of 17dB. The input reflection coefficient is less than -15dB over 45-70GHz. An avalanche noise source using a diode-configured SiGe HBT is also integrated in the front-end for two-reference on-chip calibration, which can provide up to a high excess noise ratio of 25dB. The LNA consumes a DC power of 15 mW and occupies a chip area of 0.6 mm
²
. To the best of our knowledge, this is the lowest reported noise figure of an integrated switch and LNA at V-band frequencies and is the first monolithic two-reference calibrating mm-wave SiGe radiometer front-end.