A 110-130-GHz, Frequency Quadrupler with 12.5% Drain Efficiency in 22-nm FD-SOI CMOS

A high-efficiency frequency quadrupler (X4) operates between 110 and 130 GHz. The design consists of two push-pull doublers and three differential amplifiers that improve output power and conversion gain. An extended-drain field-effect transistor (ED-FET), available in a 22-nm FD-SOI CMOS technology, is used to increase the supply voltage to 1.4 V, achieving a peak measured output power of 11.3 dBm with 12.5% drain efficiency and 6.1 dB peak conversion gain. To our knowledge, this is the highest output power and drain efficiency for silicon-based D-Band frequency multipliers.