Khanh Thai

Advanced Heterogeneous Integration of InP HBT and CMOS Si Technologies

Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems (NGAS) is developing an Advanced Heterogeneous Integration (AHI) process to integrate III-V semiconductor chiplets on CMOS wafers under the Compound Semiconductor Materials on Silicon (COSMOS) DARPA program. The objective of the program is to have a heterogeneous interconnect pitch and length less than 5 um to enable intimate transistor scale integration. This integration will enable significant improvement in dynamic range and bandwidth of high performance mixed signal circuits.

Advanced heterogeneous integration of InP HBT and CMOS Si technologies for high performance mixed signal applications

Northrop Grumman Space Technology (NGST) is developing an Advanced Heterogeneous Integration (AHI) process to integrate III-V semiconductor chiplets on CMOS wafers under the Compound Semiconductor Materials on Silicon (COSMOS) DARPA program. The objective of the program is to have a heterogeneous interconnect pitch and length less than 5 um to enable intimate transistor scale integration. This integration will enable significant improvement in ADC dynamic range and bandwidth

A 64QAM 94GHz CMOS transmitter SoC with digitally-assisted power amplifiers and thru-silicon waveguide power combiners

A 94GHz 64QAM 1Gbps reconfigurable system-on-chip (SoC) CMOS transmitter with digitally-assisted power amplifiers (DAPA) and back-etched thru silicon waveguide power combiners is presented. The SoC includes a 7M gate ASIC with reconfigurable digital modulation and transmit pre-coding. The ASIC feeds two 10b 1.4GHz current-steering DACs followed by a direct conversion IQ modulator driving eight DAPAs. A 64QAM signal achieves 3.9% EVM with 50dBc ACPR at 94GHz. The data rate is 1.05Gbps and the output power exceeds 10dBm. DC power is 2.1W. The SoC uses IBM 12SOI CMOS.

Diverse Accessible Heterogeneous Integration (DAHI) at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems (NGAS)

Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems (NGAS) under the Diverse Accessible Heterojunction Integration (DAHI) DARPA program is developing heterogeneous integration processes, process design kit (PDK) and thermal analysis tools to integrate deep submicron CMOS, Indium Phosphide (InP) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs), Gallium Nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) and high-Q passive technologies for advanced DoD and other government systems.

A 45GHz CMOS transmitter SoC with digitally-assisted power amplifiers for 64QAM efficiency improvement

A 45GHz 64QAM system-on-chip (SoC) CMOS transmitter with digitally-assisted power amplifiers (DAPA) is presented. The SoC includes a 7M gate ASIC with 9b reconfigurable symbol mapping, 8X upsampling, 161tap pulse shape filtering, IQ imbalance correction and DAPA envelope/time estimation. The ASIC feeds two 10b IQ current-steering DACs and active IQ modulator. A unique transformer splitting up converter drives eight parallel combined DAPAs. The chip is packaged in aluminum housing with WR22 outputs. A 64QAM signal achieves 1.8% EVM with 33dBc ACPR at 45GHz. The data rate is 450Mbps and the integrated output power exceeds -10dBm.

InP HBT/Si CMOS-Based 13-b 1.33-Gsps Digital-to-Analog Converter With > 70-dB SFDR

Gigahertz-rate Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) have become readily available from several commercial vendors but have been unable to achieve >;70 dB spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) performance over a wide bandwidth (≥500MHz). This paper presents the results of a unique, heterogeneously-integrated (InP HBT with 0.18um silicon CMOS), 13-bit 1.33Gsps DAC that achieves >;70dB SFDR across a 500MHz bandwidth in the second Nyquist zone (750MHz to 1250MHz).

InP HBT/Si CMOS-Based 13-Bit 1.33Gsps Digital-to-Analog Converter with >70 dB SFDR

Abstract - Gigahertz-rate Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) have become readily available from several commercial vendors but have been unable to achieve >70 dB spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) performance over a wide bandwidth (≥500MHz). This paper presents the results of a unique, heterogeneously-integrated (InP HBT with 0.18um silicon CMOS), 13-bit 1.33Gsps DAC that achieves >70dB SFDR across a 500MHz bandwidth in the second Nyquist zone (750MHz to 1250MHz).

3D Wafer-Scale Integration for RF and Digital Applications

Northrop Grumman Space Technology has developed an integration technology that is capable of intimately integrating III-V semiconductor devices with Si CMOS under DARPA’s COSMOS program. The integration approach is based on a direct face-to-face bonding between pre-fabricated III-V chiplets and CMOS wafers. It is capable of integrating CS (compound semiconductor) devices from smaller wafer substrates to a larger Si host wafer as well as integrating multiple CS technologies onto the same Si CMOS host wafer. This process can be applied to virtually any CS and Si technologies. Figure 1(a) shows the main steps of the AHI (Advanced Heterogeneous Integration) approach: Chiplet singulation, chiplet transfer and chiplet bonding. Figure 1(b) is the simplified flow diagram of the AHI process. Figure 2(a) is a cross-sectional presentation of an integrated CS/CMOS circuit and Figure 2(b) is a SEM photograph of the fabricated circuit, showing the InP chiplet on a silicon substrate. Integrated differential amplifiers (DAs) have been demonstrated using this 3D AHI integration approach. Figure 3 presents the data obtained from one of the integrated DAs. This DA demonstration integrates the 0.18um Silicon CMOS technology with 6 layers of interconnections from Jazz Semiconductor and NGST’s 0.4um emitter high speed HBT technology. Further integration details on AHI as well as demonstrated integrated circuit data will be presented in the full paper.

A Meeting of Materials: Integrating Diverse Semiconductor Technologies for Improved Performance at Lower Cost

Semiconductor technology has seen rapid advances in recent years. Complementary?metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology is providing tremendous digital processing power by integrating billions of transistors. Indium phosphide (InP) has bridged the terahertz frequency barrier. Gallium nitride (GaN) is offering unprecedented solid-state RF power across the microwave spectrum. Diverse, accessible heterogeneous integration (DAHI) allows engineers to take advantage of all of these advances by combining them along with other semiconductor technologies onto a single chip. DAHI offers the ultimate in RF, mixedsignal, and digital capability for future mobile applications that will demand smaller size and weight with lower power and cost.

A Wideband 25-35GHz 5-Bit Low Power 2X2 CMOS Beam Forming Network IC for Reconfigurable Phased Arrays

The first reported reconfigurable wideband mm-wave CMOS based beam forming network IC is demonstrated. The IC consists of two independent inputs and two correlated outputs. Each of the four RF paths has 2 bits amplitude control and 3 bits phase control, as well as a wideband amplifier to maintain RF signal power. The measured RMS amplitude and phase error is less than 0.4dB and 4° respectively. Amplifier power gating is added for low-power modes and calibration. An addressable shift register core (ASRC) to command the beam forming IC is included. The ASRC provides intelligent control of adjacent III-V based chips. The IC is 5mmX5mm and consumes 45mW of DC power.