Fully Integrated SiGe HBT BiCMOS Transmit-Receive Front-End IC for 5G mmW Radio with A Reconfigurable Built-In Diode RF Switch

This work presents a novel SiGe HBT BiCMOS TRX front-end for 5G mmW radio. A built-in base-to-collector diode (D
BC
) of a CB HBT in a cascode, with a coupled line impedance inverting balun, is reconfigured to reverse- or forward-biased to act as a PA or an RF switch in TX and RX modes, respectively. This architecture enables to remove any lossy switch in TX path, which leads to improvement in P
out
, PAE, and NF simultaneously. It attains peak P
out
of 22.0 dBm, 36.5% PAE, and the minimum NF of 3.08 dB at 28 GHz. It also supports linear amplification of 400 MHz 64 QAM 5G NR FR2 CP signal.