A low-phase noise D-band signal source based on 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS and 0.15 µm AlGaN/GaN HEMT technologies

Abstract

This paper reports on a record-low-phase noise D-band signal source with 5 dBm output power, and 1.3 GHz tuning range. The source is based on the unconventional combination of a fundamental frequency 23 GHz oscillator in 150 nm AlGaN/GaN HEMT technology followed by a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS MMIC including a sixtupler and an amplifier. The amplifier operates in compression mode as power-limiting amplifier, to equalize the source output power so that it is nearly independent of the oscillator's gate and drain bias voltages used for tuning the frequency of the source. The choice of using a GaN HEMT oscillator is motivated by the need for a low oscillator noise floor, which recently has been demonstrated as a bottle-neck for data rates in wideband millimeter-wave communication systems. The phase noise performance of this signal source is −128 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz-offset. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this result is the lowest reported phase noise of D-band signal source.