Millimeter-Wave BiCMOS Backscatter Modulator for 5 G-IoT Applications

In this letter, the authors present the first millimeter-wave (mm-wave) high-order backscatter modulator, based on a BiCMOS technology for 5G/Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The design and implementation of the proposed system are described, followed by the considered characterization measurement setup. This work presents a chip that performs different orders of backscatter modulation, M-quadratic-amplitude modulation (QAM), for a wide range of operation both in frequency (20-28 GHz) as well as with multiple values of input power. Besides that, the modulator presents the lowest power consumption compared with the state of the art. An extensive estimation of error vector magnitude (EVM) values for different frequencies and modulations (16, 32, and 64-QAM) is presented. These results show that it will be possible, in a future implementation, to establish low power consumption communication links with a multigigabit data rate in a wide range of frequencies.