An Energy-Efficient V-Band OOK Transmitter With 14.5-Gb/s Data Rate and 11.1% DC-to-RF Efficiency

This article presents an energy-efficient V-band on–off keying (OOK) transmitter (TX) based on a co-optimization methodology for high output power and energy efficiency. The TX integrates a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), a broadband passive modulator, and a broadband baseband amplifier (BBA). The passive modulator consists of a transmission line with two distributed switches, which achieves an on–off ratio of more than 19 dB and an insertion loss of less than 3.5 dB. Implemented in a 65-nm LP CMOS process, the proposed TX achieves a data rate of 14.5 Gb/s and a maximum output power of 4.5 dBm with a peak dc-to-RF efficiency of 11.1%, leading to a record FoM value of 1.61.