1. An integrated subharmonic coupled-oscillator scheme for a 60-GHz phased-array transmitter
- Author
-
Buckwalter, James F., Babakhani, Aydin, Komijani, Abbas, and Hajimiri, Ali
- Subjects
Integrated circuits -- Design and construction ,Semiconductor chips -- Design and construction ,Oscillators (Electronics) -- Usage ,Phased array antennas -- Usage ,Standard IC ,Business ,Computers ,Electronics ,Electronics and electrical industries - Abstract
This paper describes the design of an integrated coupled-oscillator array in SiGe for millimeter-wave applications. The design focuses on a scalable radio architecture where multiple dies are tiled to form larger arrays. A 2 x 2 oscillator array for a 60-GHz transmitter is fabricated with integrated power amplifiers and on-chip antennas. To lock between multiple dies, an injection-locking scheme appropriate for wire-bond interconnects is described. The 2 x 2 array demonstrates a 200-MHz locking range and 1 x 4 array formed by two adjacent chips has a 60-MHz locking range. The phase noise of the coupled oscillators is below -100 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset when locked to an external reference. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the highest frequency demonstration of coupled oscillators fabricated in a conventional silicon integrated-circuit process. Index Terms--BiCMOS integrated circuits, coupled oscillator, mutual injection locking, phased arrays.
- Published
- 2006