A 134-149 GHz IF Beamforming Phased-Array Receiver Channel with 6.4-7.5 dB NF Using CMOS 45nm RFSOI

This paper presents a 140 GHz IF beamforming phased-array receive channel with low noise performance in 45nm RFSOI process. The proposed high-IF (9-14 GHz) beamforming architecture realizes the lower loss and power consumption compared with RF and LO beamforming at 140 GHz, while rejecting the noise contribution from the image without external filtering. In this design, a fully-differential low-noise amplifier (LNA) is followed by an active double-balanced mixer and an IF beamformer, consisting of a variable gain amplifier (VGA) and a vector modulator (VM). A x6 on-chip multiplier is used to generate the 126-138 GHz local oscillator. The receiver consumes 133 mW with a measured peak gain and average NF of 26.5 dB and 7 dB, respectively (NF 6.4-7.5 dB at 134-149 GHz). The measured input P1dB is -30+/-1 dBm at 139-142 GHz. To our knowledge, this work presents the first phased-array beamformer receive channel with the lowest NF in the 140 GHz band.