Yi-Ching Wu

A V-Band On-Wafer Near-Field Antenna Measurement System Using an IC Probe Station

Most on-wafer antenna radiation pattern measurement systems at a frequency range above the V-band require a testing range to satisfy the far-field condition and a sample holder for probing. Because the testing range and the sample holder must be customized, building this kind of testing environment increased cost of standard integrated circuit (IC) measurement facilities. To address this problem, this study presents an on-wafer measurement system for a V-band on-chip antenna using a probe station for IC measurements. This study uses the near-field antenna measurement technique to decrease the distance between the receiving antenna and the antenna under test (AUT). Therefore, this system effectively uses the limited space around the chuck as the testing range. As a result, this design avoids the reflective objects that constitute the probe station. This study also presents a low-scattering probe to further reduce the scattering. A standard pyramidal horn antenna and a wide beamwidth, 74-GHz on-chip antenna on a 100-

Broadband monolithic GaAs-based HEMT diode mixers

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A W-band image reject mixer for astronomical observation system

m GaAs substrate were measured to verify system performance. The measured antenna radiation patterns show that the proposed measurement system improves the scanning angle and significantly reduces the unwanted scattering.

Design of a

Broad-band monolithic diode mixers covering 17.5-33 GHz with different topologies are designed, fabricated and tested. The topologies under investigation include the singly balanced mixer with 90/spl deg/ and 180/spl deg/ coupler and the sub-harmonically pumped (SHP) mixer. These monolithic microwave integrated circuits are fabricated using a 0.2-/spl mu/m pseudomorphic HEMT foundry process on a 4-mil thick GaAs substrate, and thus the measurement results for each topology are evaluated on a fair basis. The SHP mixer, with a miniature size of 1.3 mm/spl times/1.1 mm, demonstrates 10-12 dB conversion loss at 17.5-33 GHz of RF with 2.5-GHz IF and both LO-to-RF, LO-to-IF isolations of both better than 25 dB. It outmatches the singly balanced approaches, as well as achieves rival performance compared with previously reported results at similar frequencies.

V

In this paper, the design of a broadband fundamental mixer using an improved Lange coupler is presented. This W-band image reject mixer is implemented in 0.15-µm GaAs PHEMT process. This mixer demonstrates measured conversion loss about 10.5 dB from 90∼112 GHz and image rejection about 15.9 dB from 82∼ 116.5 GHz. All the characteristics of this mixer facilitate the application in ALMA project.

-Band 20-dBm Wideband Power Amplifier Using Transformer-Based Radial Power Combining in 90-nm CMOS

This paper presents a V-band 1.2-V wideband power amplifier (PA) with a compact four-way radial power combiner in a 90-nm CMOS process. A transformer-based radial power combiner with a 1-dB insertion loss at 60 GHz and a 0.043-mm2 compact size is designed for high-output-power combining and wideband load-pull matching. This PA achieves the saturated output power (PSAT) of 20.6 dBm, the maximum power-added efficiency (PAEmax) of 20.3%, and a 20.1-dB small-signal gain (S21) at 60 GHz. The PA maintains a flat 20-dBm PSAT with PAEmax better than 17.3% within 50-64 GHz, and it has a 3-dB bandwidth (BW) of 24.5 GHz (41.8-66.3 GHz). The chip area without pads is 0.432 mm2. To the best of the authors knowledge, this V-band PA with a flat frequency response of 20-dBm PSAT presents the widest large-signal BW (50-64 GHz) compared with the reported 60-GHz CMOS high-output PAs.

A 206 ∼ 220 GHz CMOS VCO using body-bias technique for frequency tuning

A 206 ~ 220 GHz varactor-free voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is proposed to improve the output power and tuning range. The topology of the VCO is push-push cross-coupled pair. By using body-bias technique, the parasitic capacitor of the cross-coupled pair can be adjusted, and the varactors in the conventional VCO design can be removed. The proposed VCO was designed and implemented in TSMC 65-nm CMOS technology with a chip size of 0.25 × 0.25 mm2. The tuning range is 6.6% (from 206.2 to 220 GHz). The measured phase noise is -66 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency. The output power is 1.3 dBm at 216 GHz with 54-mW dc power consumption and its maximum dc-to-RF efficiency is 2.1%. To the best of our knowledge, this varactor-free VCO achieves the highest dc-to-RF efficiency among published CMOS VCOs around 200 GHz.

A 60-GHz 20.6-dBm symmetric radial-combining wideband power amplifier with 20.3% peak PAE and 20-dB gain in 90-nm CMOS

A 60-GHz 1.2-V wideband power amplifier (PA) with a compact 4-way radial power combiner implemented in 90-nm CMOS process is presented in this paper. The transformer-based radial power combiner with 1-dB insertion loss at 60 GHz and 0.043-mm2 compact size is designed for high output power combining and wideband load-pull matching. This PA achieves saturated output power (PSAT) of 20.6 dBm, maximum power added efficiency (PAEmax) of 20.3%, and 20.1-dB small-signal gain (S21) at 60 GHz. The PA maintains flat 20-dBm PSAT with PAEmax better than 17.3% within 50-64 GHz, and it has a 3-dB bandwidth (3-dB BW) of 24.5 GHz (41.8-66.3 GHz). The chip area without pads is 0.432 mm2. To the authors best knowledge, this PA with flat 20-dBm PSAT presents the widest large-signal bandwidth (50-64 GHz) compared to other 60-GHz CMOS PA.

A novel 30–90 GHz singly balanced mixer with broadband LO/IF

An innovative mixer architecture using gate- and drain-pumped with combining drain terminals of nMOS transistors is proposed to enhance IF and local oscillator (LO) operation bandwidths in 90-nm CMOS for astronomical application. With 0.6 mW of dc power, this mixer achieved peak conversion gains of -6.2, -6.1, -8.6, and -7.2 dB at LO frequencies of 30, 50, 60, and 90 GHz, respectively. At an LO power of 2.3 dBm and an LO frequency of 30 GHz, the IF 3-dB bandwidth is 26 GHz. When the LO power is 4.2 dBm at an LO frequency of 90 GHz, the mixer has an IF 3-dB bandwidth of 16 GHz. The IP1dB (input 1-dB gain compression) is better than 2 dBm from 30 to 90 GHz. The chip occupies an area of 0.389 mm2. Compared with other published works, this mixer demonstrates a breakthrough for extremely wide IF and LO bandwidths in low dc power consumption with high IP1dB.