CMOS radio front-end circuit blocks for millimeter-wave communications and atmospheric remote sensing receivers
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School of Electrical Engineering |
Doctoral thesis (article-based)
| Defence date: 2018-02-22
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Language
en
Pages
95 + app. 85
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Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS, 29/2018
Abstract
This thesis focuses on integrated circuits operating at millimeter-wave frequencies in CMOS technologies. More explicitly, the dissertation concentrates on the design and characterization of mm-wave monolithic active and passive components, the low-noise amplifier (LNA), the amplifier beyond cut-off frequency, the resistive mixer, the Gilbert-cell mixer, the sub-harmonic mixer, and the receiver front-end for earth remote sensing applications. The applications for these circuits vary from E-band high-speed communication to atmospheric remote sensing at 183 GHz and also for 300 GHz spectroscopy. This dissertation presents research contributions in the form of nine scientific publications and an overview of the research topic, which also summarizes the principal results of the work. MMIC designs at mm-wave frequencies have a significant dependency on the accurate design of passives and active components. Therefore, an extensive study on designing various transmission lines and other critical passive components such as on-chip Lange couplers at 130 GHz and 180 GHz, transformers at 90 GHz and 130 GHz, spiral baluns at 90 GHz and 130 GHz, finger and plate capacitors, and RF probing pads are carried out. For active device modeling, the layout dependency on the transistor performance is investigated. In this work, a simple and computationally efficient modeling technique is proposed to characterize the coupled slow-wave coplanar waveguide (CS-CPW) structure which is valid for any silicon technology. A D-band LNA utilizing the CS-CPW as the matching elements, and a 3-dB quadrature coupler covering the whole E- to W-band using the CS-CPW structure are designed to verify the proposed modeling methodology of the CS-CPW. The LNA shows a gain from 135 GHz to 170 GHz and a noise figure of 8.5 dB, and the coupler occupies only 50% silicon area compared to the conventional Lange couplers. Many different mm-wave circuit blocks are also developed within the scope of this work. The S-CPW based amplifier illustrates gain from 124 to 184 GHz. The 0.325-THz CMOS amplifier shows a gain of 4.5 dB, and demonstrate the highest operation frequency for a silicon amplifier up to date. A compact 129-140 GHz Gilbert-cell mixer and 127-140 GHz image-rejection resistive mixer are realized for a 140-GHz transceiver. At 180 GHz, a compact subharmonic I/Q balanced resistive mixer together with two on-chip IF amplifiers are realized and show a conversion gain of +8 dB with a 20 dB IR ratio. Furthermore, in this thesis, a feasibility study for using the CMOS circuit blocks in designing the future light-weight, small-in-size atmospheric remote sensing receivers is performed. The performance of the designed CMOS down-converter MMIC demonstrates the potential of the CMOS technology for achieving the high-level of integration necessary for the small-sized atmospheric remote sensing receivers and small satellites.Description
Supervising professor
Halonen, Kari, Prof., Aalto University, Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, FinlandThesis advisor
Varonen, Mikko, Dr., VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, FinlandKeywords
Other note
Parts
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[Publication 1]: D. Parveg, A. Vahdati, M. Varonen, D. Karaca, M. Kärkkäinen, K. Halonen. Modeling and applications of millimeter-wave slow-wave coplanar coupled lines in CMOS. Proceedings of the 10th European MicrowaveIntegrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC), Paris, 2015, pp. 207–210, Oct 2015.
DOI: 10.1109/EuMIC.2015.7345105 View at publisher
- [Publication 2]: D. Parveg, M. Varonen, D. Karaca, M. Khan, A. Vahdati, K. Halonen. Algorithmic design of on-chip mm-wave slow-wave quadrature coupler in silicon technology. Submitted to IEEE Transaction on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 2017
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[Publication 3]: D. Parveg, M. Varonen, D. Karaca, A. Vahdati, M. Kantanen, K. Halonen. Design of a D-Band CMOS amplifier utilizing coupled slowwave coplanar waveguides. IEEE Transaction on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 66, no. 3, pp. 1359-1373, 2018.
DOI: 10.1109/TMTT.2017.2777976 View at publisher
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[Publication 4]: D. Parveg, M. Varonen, D. Karaca, A. Vahdati, K. Halonen. A 124-184 GHz amplifier using slow-wave transmission lines in 28-nm FDSOI CMOS process. 2016 Global Symposium on Millimeter Waves (GSMM)& ESA Workshop on Millimetre-Wave Technology and Applications, Espoo, 2016, pp. 1–4, Jun 2016.
DOI: 10.1109/GSMM.2016.7500297 View at publisher
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[Publication 5]: D. Parveg, D. Karaca, M. Varonen, A. Vahdati, K. Halonen. Demonstration of a 0.325-THz CMOS amplifier. 2016 Global Symposium on Millimeter Waves (GSMM) & ESA Workshop on Millimetre-Wave Technology and Applications, Espoo, 2016, pp. 1–3, Jun 2016.
DOI: 10.1109/GSMM.2016.7500295 View at publisher
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[Publication 6]: D. Parveg, M. Varonen, M. Kärkkäinen, D. Karaca, A. Vahdati, K. Halonen. Wideband millimeter-wave active and passive mixers in 28 nm bulk CMOS technology. Proceedings of the 10th European Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC), Paris, 2015, pp. 116–119, Oct 2015.
DOI: 10.1109/EuMIC.2015.7345082 View at publisher
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[Publication 7]: A. Vahdati, D. Parveg, M. Varonen, M. Kärkkäinen, D. Karaca, K. Halonen. W-band phase shifter in 28-nm CMOS. Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, Springer, vol. 84, no. 3, pp.3 99–408, Sep 2015.
DOI: /10.1007/s10470-015-0596-x View at publisher
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[Publication 8]: D. Parveg, M. Varonen, P. Kangaslahti, A. Safaripour, A. Hajimiri, T. Tikka, T. Gaier, K. Halonen. CMOS I/Q subharmonic mixer for millimeter-wave atmospheric remote sensing. IEEE Microwave and wireless components letters, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 285-287, Apr 2016.
DOI: 10.1109/LMWC.2016.2537786 View at publisher
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[Publication 9]: D. Parveg, M. Varonen, A. Safaripour, S. Bowers, T. Tikka, P. Kangaslahti, T. Gaier, A. Hajimiri, K. Halonen.A 180-GHz CMOS down-converter MMIC for atmospheric remote sensing applications. IEEE 17th Topical Meeting on Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems (SiRF), Phoenix, AZ, pp. 64–67, Jan 2017.
DOI: 10.1109/SIRF.2017.7874372 View at publisher