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The recent significant performance improvement of SiGe Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors has opened the way to the millimeter-wave domain. In the future, this will allow the development of new exciting consumer-oriented applications such as high-data-rate wireless systems or high resolution automotive radar. However, with the aggressive scaling of device dimensions and the implementation of new advanced features, the cost of Si-based technologies becomes a major issue. The possible solutions are, first, to use and combine efficient design techniques to reach higher frequencies for a given technology with relaxed lateral scaling. A second approach consists in using a circuit, once the design has been successful, as a foundation for future designs, thus drastically reducing the required time for a design cycle and its cost. These two approaches have been investigated in this work. The four main RF blocks of a typical RF front-end (Low Noise Amplifier, Voltage Controlled Oscillator, Downconverter Mixer and Frequency Divider) have been successfully designed and achieve very good results beyond one third of the transistor transit frequency. Furthermore, by slightly modifying the design topology (mostly the reactive elements), the ICs have been redesigned to operate at higher frequencies and demonstrate very good performance. |
