A New RF-Thermal-Electric Power Detector With High Sensitivity and Inherent Linearity in 0.18-μm CMOS Technology

A new RF-thermal-electric true root mean square (rms) power detector that operates at
$C$
-/
$X$
-band is proposed in the standard 0.18-
$\mu \text{m}$
RF CMOS technology. The reported detector comprises the two symmetrical waveguide structures, the well-matched RF power absorbers, and many sandwiched thermocouples which are electrically connected in series by aluminum and p-type polysilicon. The experimental results demonstrate that the incident RF power and dc voltage have inherent linearity within less than 0.6% over a dynamic range of 0–21.8 dBm. In the operational bandwidth (BW) from 6 to 12 GHz, the sensitivity of device is better than 13.31 mV/mW. The measured results of the vector network analyzer (VNA) show that the input reflection coefficient is less than −25.9 dB over operational BW. The proposed RF-thermal-electric power detector shows great potential for
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-/
$X$
-band RF transceivers.