Low-latency GbE 60 GHz TDD transceiver using SiGe-RFICs and PCB leaky-wave antennas

In this work, a low-cost and low-latency 60 GHz transceiver supporting beam steering in 5G hot-spots is presented. Beam steering is achieved via carrier frequency tuning by using a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and a PCB based leaky-wave antenna (LWA). Besides enabling inherent beam steering, which does not add to the link latency, the LWA also requires only one RF port even for multiple beams. The fabricated LWA provides up to 20 dBi directivity within the 50-70 GHz band. Within this bandwidth, over 40 deg beam steering is achieved. The employed SiGe 60 GHz transceiver RFIC is highly integrated. It includes RF and baseband amplifier chains, mixers, filters and the VCO with a control loop. The transceiver RFIC is fabricated using a BiCMOS foundry process providing scalability and low-cost. By integrating the SiGe RFIC with the LWA, a Gigabit-Ethernet (GbE) wireless transceiver is developed providing time division duplex (TDD) 60 GHz wireless communication with a standardized GbE interface. The 60 GHz transceivers are employed in a 2 m long wireless communication link, which is experimentally evaluated using an IP traffic tester. A latency of about 0.4 ms and an aggregated data rate of almost 1 Gbit/s is experimentally achieved.