Performance Evaluation of Ultra-Wideband 246-GHz BPSK Transmitters on an Organic Substrate With External Chip and Substrate Antenna

This work presents the design and evaluation of two binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) transmitter modules operating around 246 with tested real-world data transmission rates of up to 32 Gbit
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and demonstrated transmission of 10 Gbit
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. The systems use external antennas bonded to the massive monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) to allow maximum assembly and antenna design flexibility. This work presents the first transmitter system fully integrated into a printed circuit board (PCB) and paves the way for future commercial exploitation of the frequency band. The chosen antenna concepts are novel and offer great flexibility for future system. No previous demonstrated system utilized and exploited the benefits of a differential radio frequency (RF) interconnect and antennas solution. The overall system performance and the antenna patterns are measured. Bit error rate measurements are used to evaluate the system’s capabilities, efficiency, and limitations and are measured over angle, distance, and data rate. This demonstrates the practical application and applicability of systems operating above 200 . The available measurement equipment limits the system as demonstrated. Demonstrated data rates, scenarios, and efficiency are on par or exceed the state-of-the-art of transmitters above 200, which it is compared against. The evaluation of real-world transmission scenarios over distance and receiver misalignment is the first of its kind reported above 200 and gives valuable insight into possible usage scenarios.