A 90–100-GHz Phased-Array Transmit/Receive Silicon RFIC Module With Built-In Self-Test

This paper presents the first built-in self-test system (BIST) for W-band transmit-receive phased-array modules. Low-loss high-isolation switches are attached to the RF input and output ports using λ/4 transmission-line sections, which result in a high shunt impedance when the BIST is disabled and minimal penalty in additional loss. A W-band in-phase/quadrature down-conversion mixer/receiver with 0.5-dB amplitude and 4°-5°phase imbalance at 90-100 GHz is also implemented on-chip and is used as an on-chip vector network analyzer. The BIST allows the measurement of the normalized S21 in both transmit and receive modes with high accuracy (4-bit phase response, 0.5-dB amplitude variation) at 90-100 GHz without any external calibration. The BIST also results in a normalized frequency response that agrees well with the measured S-parameters at 90-100 GHz.