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This paper presents a lumped scalable model for spiral inductors in a radio frequency (RF) gallium nitride (GaN) technology on silicon substrate. The model has been developed by exploiting electromagnetic (EM) simulations of geometrically scaled spiral inductors. To this aim, the technology substrate, i.e., the metal back-end-of-line along with dielectric and semiconductor layers of the adopted GaN process, has been validated by means of experimental data and then used to define the EM simulator set-up for the spiral inductors. The proposed model adopts a simple π-topology with only seven lumped components and predicts inductor performance in terms of inductance, quality factor (Q-factor) and self-resonance frequency (SRF) for a large range of geometrical parameters of the spiral (i.e., number of turns, metal width, inner diameter). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief gives an overview of recent advancements in CMOS automotive radar sensors, focusing on the most critical circuit design at mm-wave frequencies. Highly scaled CMOS technologies enable very low-power consumption, reduced costs, and higher data processing capacity and integration compared to state-of-the-art SiGe BiCMOS chip-set solutions commonly adopted in commercial products. The very bottleneck is still represented by the radio front-end due to the challenging requirements of long-range radars. Circuit topologies and design tradeoffs are here discussed with reference to critical building blocks of the mm-wave radar front-end, reporting circuit implementations for a 77-GHz long-range radar sensor in a 28-nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator CMOS technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a 77-GHz automotive radar receiver in a 28-nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator CMOS technology. It exploits a mixer-first direct-conversion architecture to trade-off noise and linearity performance. The receiver is composed of a 77-GHz downconverter, a variable-gain amplifier, and a switched-capacitor low-pass filter. It adopts an effective and robust approach for leakage suppression due to the TX to RX crosstalk, which overcomes both gain and linearity limitations. The receiver draws an overall quiescent current as low as 27 mA from a 1-V supply voltage and provides an overall gain up to 75 dB with a noise figure of 8.2 dB. Despite the low supply voltage, an excellent blocker immunity of −9.5 dBm is achieved along with an output 1-dB compression point as high as −1.5 dBV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a $W$ -band power amplifier (PA) for automotive radar applications. It was designed in a 28-nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator CMOS technology with a transition frequency of around 270 GHz and a standard back-end-of-line. The circuit adopts a pseudo-differential topology with coupling transformers, which allow both compact matching networks and layout-optimized interstage interconnections. The power stage exploits a transformer-based folded-cascode structure that is very suitable for low-voltage mm-wave power applications. The PA is able to deliver a saturated output power as high as 13.5 dBm at 77 GHz with a power-added efficiency of 14.5%, while using a power supply as low as 1 V. The linear power gain is 26.5 dB and the current consumption is 150 mA. The PA occupies a core die size of $700\,\,\mu \text{m}\,\,\times 200\,\,\mu \text{m}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief presents a fully integrated dc–dc converter consisting of only two CMOS chips, which are a power oscillator with an integrated transformer and a full-bridge rectifier. A thick inter-metal oxide layer guarantees a galvanic isolation rating as high as 5 kV. A current-reuse hybrid-coupled oscillator is proposed, which is based on a three-winding tapped isolation transformer and improves both output power and silicon area occupation with respect to previous works. The converter is operated at 5-V power supply and is able to deliver up to 300-mW dc power at 10-V output voltage while exhibiting a power density and a power efficiency of 36 mW/mm2 and 24%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a pseudodifferential power amplifier for 77-GHz automotive radar. The circuit is fabricated in a SiGe HBT BiCMOS technology featuring bipolar transistors with fT/f\max of 230/280 GHz. The amplifier adopts a transformer-coupling current-reuse approach to improve both gain and efficiency. An interstacked transformer is also profitably adopted to reduce output losses due to the differential-to-single-ended conversion. The amplifier exhibits a saturated power, a peak power-added efficiency, and a gain of 14.5 dBm, 9%, and 25 dB, respectively, thus achieving a first-rate figure-of-merit as high as 4755. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a 15-dBm power amplifier for 77-GHz automotive radar applications, which is fabricated in a 0.13-\mu\ m SiGe:C BiCMOS process featuring bipolar transistors with f T / f\max of 230/280 GHz. The circuit consists of a two-stage pseudodifferential cascode with fully integrated input/output matching networks. State-of-art performance is achieved with the proposed design algorithm and layout optimization. The amplifier demonstrates a figure-of-merit of 2500 achieving a 22.5-dB power gain and a power-added efficiency of 7.5% at 77 GHz, while drawing 130 mA from a 2.5-V voltage supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This work presents a review of integrated transformers for galvanic isolation with particular focus on their modelling in power transfer systems. A comparison between transformer-coupled oscillator topologies is carried out, highlighting the main differences in the realization of the isolation transformers. Lumped geometrically scalable modelling of the most adopted isolation transformer topologies are presented and compared. Transformer models have been validated by means of electromagnetic simulations in a wide range of geometrical parameters, achieving absolute errors lower than 12% for inductance, Q -factor peak, self-resonance frequency, and magnetic coupling factor. Highlights • A review of integrated transformers for galvanically isolated dc-dc converters. • Scalable lumped models of three different transformer configurations are compared. • The results can be exploited within an iterative co-design procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]