Receive and Transmit Beamforming SiGe BiCMOS ICs for Scalable E-Band Phased Arrays

This paper presents E-band 4 and 16 element receive (RX) and transmit (TX) phase shifter ICs for a scalable RF beamforming architecture. The chips are fabricated in an 0.13-µm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The TX/RX vector-modulator based phase shifters have an 8-bit resolution. Based on on-wafer measurements at 75 GHz, the 4-element RX phased-array chip achieves a single channel measured maximum gain of 18 dB for the 0 to 360 degree phase range with a simulated noise figure of around 10 dB. The 4-element TX has a single channel measured maximum gain of 16 dB for the full phase range including an on-chip power divider with a simulated 1-dB output compression point of −0.5 dBm. The 16-channel beamforming chips are based on the 4-channel sub-arrays with on-chip power splitting/combining. The power consumption for a single RX and TX phase shifter channel is 115 and 142 mW, respectively.