A Low-Power SiGe BiCMOS 190-GHz Transceiver Chipset With Demonstrated Data Rates up to 50 Gbit/s Using On-Chip Antennas

This paper presents a 190-GHz direct conversion transceiver (TRX) chipset with on-chip antennas implemented in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology for short-distance high-data-rate wireless links. The transmitter (TX) consists of an active fundamental upconversion mixer, a local oscillator (LO) driver, and a passive balun for differential to single-ended conversion of the RF signal. The receiver (RX) is composed of a low-noise amplifier, an active fundamental mixer, an LO driver, a variable-gain baseband (BB) amplifier, and a totem-pole output stage. The wireless communication between TX and RX is enabled by on-chip monopole antennas, which are fabricated using standard wire-bonding tools. Measurements of the TRX chipset equipped with these antennas show a 6-dB BB link bandwidth of 20 GHz, corresponding to 40 GHz of the RF link bandwidth. In a data transmission test setup based on a BPSK modulation, data rates of up to 40 Gbit/s over 20 mm and up to 50 Gbit/s over 6 mm are demonstrated. Consuming only 122 mW in the RX and 32 mW in the TX, this leads to a very low required energy per transferred bit of 3.9 and 3.1 pJ for the 40- and 50-Gbit/s link, respectively.