SiGe wideband power detector and IF-amplifier RFICs for W-band passive imaging systems

Abstract

This paper presents the results of some W-band power detector and wideband (IF) amplifier circuit designs made in 0.25 μm and 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS processes. Two 0.25 μm SiGe wideband power detector and amplifier RFICs present an NEP =1-2 pW/Hz 1/2 at 85-101 GHz and s 21 =10-19 dB at 2-32 GHz, respectively. To the authors' knowledge, the proposed SiGe detector design reports the widest s 11 bandwidth (s 11 ≤-10 dB 84-104 GHz) among SiGe based W-band detectors. Two 0.13 μm SiGe detector/amplifier circuits show a simulated NEP=0.2-0.9 pW/Hz 1/2 at 75-100 GHz and s 21 = 19-21 dB at 5-30 GHz. The presented SiGe power detectors and (IF) amplifiers are targeting broadband applications such as passive imaging.

A W‐band power detector RFIC design in 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS process

“…Furthermore, the input matching was not specified for the unmatched and matched power detectors presented in [2,3]. The 0.13 mm SiGe detector design (this work) obtains a lower minimum NEP and a wider s 11 210 dB bandwidth (23 GHz) in comparison with some state-of-the-art silicon based W-band power detectors [4,10,11]. The SiGe detector design in [10] obtained higher reported peak responsivity and NEP values while the measured s 11 varied between 26 and 214 dB at 75-110 GHz (the simulated s 11 was below 210 dB at 89-102 GHz).…”

“…RF and DC pads). In this design, two hetero-junction bipolar transistors are used to achieve temperature compensation [4,10,11]. The RF signal is applied to one of the transistors T1 (located at the RF input port), resulting in different output voltages V out and V ref .…”