300 GHz Integrated Heterodyne Receiver and Transmitter With On-Chip Fundamental Local Oscillator and Mixers

Abstract

A 300 GHz integrated heterodyne receiver and transmitter for wideband communication and imaging applications have been developed in a 250 nm InP double-heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) process. The receiver integrates a 300 GHz RF amplifier with a balun, a down-conversion mixer with an IF amplifier, and a local oscillator, all on a single chip. The transmitter is composed of the identical circuit blocks of RF amplifier and oscillator in addition to an up-conversion mixer. Compared to previous integrated receivers and transmitters reported at above 200 GHz, the proposed work includes the on-chip local oscillator and mixers operating at a fundamental mode. This simplifies the system architecture, thus not only reducing the chip area and DC consumption but also improving the RF performance such as high conversion gain, low spurious levels, and low noise figure. The receiver exhibits a peak conversion gain of 26 dB at 298 GHz, 3-dB bandwidth of 20 GHz, and noise figure of 12.0-16.3 dB at IF frequency from 1.1 to 7.7 GHz. The transmitter exhibits peak conversion gain of 25 dB, 3 dB bandwidth of 18 GHz, and output power of 2.3 dBm. The DC power consumption of the receiver and transmitter are 482 and 452 mW, respectively.Index Terms-Fundamental local oscillator, fundamental mixer, heterodyne receiver, heterodyne transmitter, millimeter-wave amplifier, terahertz (THz) monolithic integrated circuit.

A Broadband THz On-Chip Transition Using a Dipole Antenna with Integrated Balun

“…Recently, there has been extensive research on THz applications in various fields, such as high-speed communications, non-destructive inspections, spectroscopy, and medical imaging [2][3][4]. THz monolithic integrated circuits (TMICs), such as power amplifiers, multipliers, mixers, and antennas, have been successfully developed using advanced transistor technologies, such as a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS), gallium arsenide (GaAs) high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs), and indium phosphide (InP) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) [5][6][7][8][9][10]. These semiconductor-based technologies allow the production of low-cost, compact, portable, and mass-producible THz systems.…”

“…Therefore, the inverted microstrip line is formed between M1 and M3, with the inter-dielectric layer of 3 µm-thick benzocyclobutene (BCB). Several TMICs, such as power amplifiers, were successfully fabricated using this inverted microstrip configuration [10,18].…”

Towards MMIC-Based 300GHz Indoor Wireless Communication Systems

“…Based on an Indium-Phosphide (InP) double hetero-junction bipolar transistor (DHBT), [7] showed a transmission of 50 Gbit/s in an on-chip back-toback setup. In [8], an InP DHBT fully integrated 300 GHz transceiver MMIC is presented. In previous work our group has demonstrated the transmission of 64 Gbit/s over 850 m [9] and 96 Gbit/s over 6 m [10] using a 240 GHz carrier frequency and an MMIC frontend based on GaAs metamorphic high electron mobility transistor (mHEMT) technology.…”

Modeling technology of InP heterojunction bipolar transistor for THz integrated circuit

“…The mixer TMIC based on a gain-enhanced mixing structure using 0.5-μm InP DHBT process exhibits a peak conversion gain of 9 dB with 3 dBm LO input power at RF frequency of 213 GHz, and 6.8 dB higher conversion gain with 2 dB lower LO input power. Using TMIC blocks, multiple compact integrated transmitter and receiver ICs have been demonstrated at frequencies from 300 GHz [36][37][38] to 600 GHz 39 (Figure 11). Abbreviations: DHBT, double-heterojunction bipolar transistor; MMIC, monolithic microwave integrated circuit; PA, power amplifier; PAE, power-added efficiency.…”