A W-Band Micromachined On-Wafer Probe With Integrated Balun for Characterization of Differential Circuits

Differential circuits are commonly used for millimeter-wave monolithic integrated circuits such as amplifiers and voltage-controlled oscillators. The infrastructure for their characterization, however, remains limited at these frequencies. With the recent development in micromachined on-wafer probes, a probe integrated with balun circuitry can provide a convenient way to characterize differential integrated circuits. In this paper, a micromachined probe with an integrated balun operating at W-band is demonstrated. The measured S-parameters of the balun probe are in agreement with simulation and meet the design performance requirements. Furthermore, the balun probe design has the potential to be scaled to submillimeter-wave frequencies.