Study of Some Key Components for Millimeter-wave Receiver Front-end Applications

Autor: Hsiao-Bin Liang, 梁效彬
Rok vydání: 2008
Druh dokumentu: 學位論文 ; thesis
Popis: 96
In the first half of this thesis, some active and passive devices fabricated on silicon substrate for millimeter-wave/radio-frequency (MMW/RF) applications are characterized and modeled. For the active devices, the uniformly distributed small-signal-model for MOSFET devices is demonstrated by TSMC 0.18μm CMOS technology. This model provides good fitting results for characterizing MOSFETs up to MMW region, including the S11 kink phenomenon due to the distributed gate effect by the scaling down of the length in MOSFET devices. For the passive devices, characterization and modeling of RF stacked-inductors, MMW inductors, horseshoe-shaped microstriplines are demonstrated by Jazz 0.18μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. Several commonly-used de-embedding methods for MMW passive devices are taken into comparison and discussed. SMIS (single-turn multi-layer interlaced stacked) RF/MMW transformers were implemented by TSMC 0.18μm CMOS technology and applied to ICP (inductive coupling plasma etching) technology. Selective removal of the silicon underneath a set of SMIS RF/MMW transformers with nearly perfect magnetic-coupling factor (kIM ~ 1) and high resistive-coupling factor (kRe) is demonstrated. In the later half of this thesis, several key components (circuits) for MMW front-end applications were implemented by Jazz 0.18μm SiGe BiCMOS technology due to its high ft (cutoff frequency) and fmax (maximum oscillation frequency) for the possibility of achieving high performance MMW front-end. First of all, low-pass filters (LPFs) based on the RF-stacked inductors were implemented. A 3rd – order LPF with -3dB frequency at 360 MHz and midband insertion loss (MIL) of -1.0 dB at 10 MHz was implemented. Besides, a 5th – order LPF with -3dB frequency at 225 MHz and MIL of -1.9 dB was implemented. For the tunable design, a 5th – older LPF with tunable capacitor cells can achieve eight different cutoff frequencies (-3dB frequencies) of 170, 190, 210, 230, 235, 255, 280 and 315 MHz. The MILs of this tunable filter are ranging from -2.0 dB to -2.28 dB at 10 MHz. By the way, a high-pass filter (HPF) with stop-band-attenuation of more than 46 dB and insertion loss of below 3 dB was also implemented using differential inductors. Second, two lumped out-of-phase power splitters, 1800 and 900, were designed and implemented based on synthetic transmission lines (TLs). The measured results are excellent for 1800 splitter at 77 GHz, which have phase difference of 179.860 and amplitude difference of 0.05 dB. Within the range of 70.7 ~ 83.8 GHz, the maximum phase and amplitude errors are 20 and 0.5 dB, respectively. On the other hand, the tunable lumped-element splitter is demonstrated by attaching a simulating MOS varactor onto the measurement of 900 lumped-element splitter. It can achieve phase and amplitude difference of 90.130 and 0.038 dB at 77GHz with MOS varactor biased at 0 V. It has the maximum phase and amplitude errors of 20 and 0.5 dB within the range of 62.6 ~ 100.2 GHz. Finally, two broadband MMW LNAs were designed and implemented. Design A has a 3-dB bandwidth of 16 GHz and achieves peak |S21| of 15.8 dB at 62 GHz with measured NF of 6.8 dB at 62 GHz and is kept below 8 dB across the band. This LNA draws 9.6 mA from a 2.5 V supply, which has power consumption of 24mW. On the other hand, design B LNA has shown a 3-dB bandwidth of 17 GHz and achieves peak |S21| of 17.2 dB at 70 GHz. The measured NF is 7.4 dB at 70 GHz and is kept below 8 dB across the band we measured. This LNA draws 13.5 mA from a 3.3 V supply, that is, 44mW power consumption.
Databáze: Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations
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