A mm-Wave Differential-to-Quadrature Frequency Tripler with Automatic Locking and Quadrature Correction

This paper presents an injection-locked frequency tripler for 28-GHz direct-conversion transceivers, which takes a differential input and outputs a quadrature signal. A feedback system is added to ensure that lock occurs and to keep the quadrature error below 1° across operating frequencies and process corners. Simulations show that the tripler can cover the entire 24-30 GHz band across all corners, while consuming 32 mW from a 0.8 V supply. The circuit is designed and simulated in a 22nm FD-SOI CMOS process and occupies 0.2 mm
²
active chip area.