Compact low‐power 154 GHz receiver front‐end in 0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS

Abstract

This study presents a compact 154 GHz receiver fabricated in a 0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS process, which is composed of a three‐stage low‐noise amplifier and an improved micromixer. In order to mitigate the intrinsic DC and RF imbalance of the basic micromixer, the resistor compensation is implemented at one branch of the RF paths, which achieves superior performance. Consisting of a common‐emitter and two differential cascade stages, the separate low‐noise amplifier achieves a small‐signal gain of 21.8 dB at 155 GHz with a 3 dB bandwidth of 22 GHz. The entire receiver exhibits a maximum conversion gain of 23.8 dB at 154 GHz with a 3 dB bandwidth of 16.5 GHz. The minimum single‐sideband noise figure is measured to be 11.4 dB at 149 GHz and remains below 15 dB from 142 to 160 GHz. Exhibiting high gain, low‐noise figure and considerably high bandwidth, the characterised receiver consumes competitive low power of 70.7 mW and occupies the smallest core area of only 0.12 mm2 to the best of our knowledge.