A Comparison of CMOS and BiCMOS mm-Wave Receiver Circuits for Applications at 60GHz and Beyond

A Comparison of CMOS and BiCMOS

mm-Wave Receiver Circuits for Applications

at 60GHz and Beyond

Sharon Malevsky and John R. Long

Electronic Research Laboratory / DIMES

Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands

s.malevsky@tudelft.nl

Abstract

Implicit in the design of a 60GHz receiver front-end is the reciesquirement  amplification and gain flatness in order to support advanced modulation schemes. As we have seen from

lower frequency wireless systems, the choice of technology often

dictates the system architecture. While either silicon CMOS or

silicon Bipolar technology could be used for implementation, cost,

availability, performance and time to market constraints typically

dictate the technology choice. The trade-offs between CMOS and

Bipolar/BiCMOS technologies for mm-wave receiver circuits are

outlined in this paper. Realizing low-noise performance and gain

flatness over a wide bandwidth is used as a case study from both

the circuit and system points of view.

1. Introduction

Continued scaling of CMOS and BiCMOS technologies will eventually allow

RFIC designers to exploit the unlicensed 7GHz of free spectrum around

60GHz. The proposed 802.15.3c standard for short-range, gigabit/s communication

in the unlicensed bands at 60GHz may be used an adapter for

any gigabit/s data source or sink requiring a short-range wireless link. The

spectral allocations vary with region as shown in the following table.

The small physical size of passive circuit elements at mm-wave frequennity

to interferers due to attenuation (see Fig. 1) of the transmitted signal

327

Power Amplifiers from Wireline to RF; Very High Frequency Front Ends, 327–341.

© 2008 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

Obtenido de: http:// www.springerlink.com/content/l1674r5507002068/fulltext.pdf?page=1

Por: Tirso Ramírez

C.I.:18392099

EES