60-GHz 64- and 256-Element Dual-Polarized Dual-Beam Wafer-Scale Phased-Array Transceivers With Reticle-to-Reticle Stitching

This article presents 60-GHz 2 × 64and 2 × 256-element dual-polarized dual-beam wafer-scale phasedarray transceivers with integrated up/downconverters. The 2 × 64-element phased array is built as a single reticle and occupies 21 × 21 mm
²
. It is based on RF beamforming transmit/receive (TRX) channels with 5-bit phase and 9-bit gain control, dual nested 1:64 distribution networks with Wilkinson divider/combiners, line amplifiers (LAs), and dual up/downconverters with a shared local-oscillator (LO) multiplier chain. The differential on-chip antenna feeds are electromagnetically (EM) coupled to a high-efficiency quartz superstrate dipole antenna array placed λ/2 apart in the horizontal and vertical directions. Four 2 × 64-element phased-array reticles are then bondwire-stitched in the intermediate-frequency (IF)/LO domain to form a 2× 256-element phased-array super-reticle that occupies 42 × 42 mm
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. The 2 × 64and 2 χ 256-element phased arrays scan to ±500 in the elevation (E-plane) and azimuth (H-plane) planes. The equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) of the 2 χ 64-element array is 37-38 dBm with a 3-dB bandwidth of 60-64 GHz, while that of the 2 χ 256-element array is 42-44 dBm with a 3-dB bandwidth of 61-63 GHz per polarization. A communication link using the 2χ64-element array is demonstrated with quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), and 64-QAM waveforms, reaching 12-16-Gb/s data rates per polarization at 1.3 m. To the best of our knowledge, this article presents the first fully polarimetric scalable wafer-scale phased-array transceivers using simple reticle-to-reticle stitching, resulting in the state-ofthe-art functionality and complexity on a single chip.