A 210-to-250 GHz Sliding-IF Frequency-interleaved Transceiver with On-chip Bow-tie Antenna and 4th-order FIR-embedded Digital Modulator

This paper introduces a THz sliding-IF frequency-interleaved transceiver with an on-chip bow-tie antenna and a 4th-order FIR-embedded digital modulator. As for the transmitter (TX), two independent baseband signals are dual-up converted to the THz band and then interleaved. As for the receiver (RX), the interleaved signals are dual-down converted and separated back to each independent baseband signal. The quadrature LO signal generator with one input port is realized for both IF and RF conversion. The 4th-order FIR-embedded direct-modulation digital modulator using a 1-bit D/A interface is introduced for performing the quadrature up-conversion and modulation. The ultra-wide-band on-chip bow-tie antenna provides a solution for interconnections between chips and antennas. The three-line balun based LNA and PA are proposed for achieving wideband performance in the THz band. While limited by the measurement equipment, this work still demonstrates 16 Gb/s data transmission through two independent 2Gbaud data streams in 16-QAM modulation.