An mm-Wave CMOS/Si-Photonics Reconfigurable Hybrid-Integrated Heterodyning Software-Defined Radio Receiver

This article presents a re-configurable hybrid millimeter-wave (mm-wave) software-defined radio (SDR) receiver that integrates silicon photonics (SiPhs) and complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) chips. The SDR system leverages a programmable photonic integrated circuit (PIC) with high- Q filters, enabling versatile channel selection, image rejection, and jammer rejection capabilities over a tunable frequency range of 30–45 GHz and a bandwidth of 3–5 GHz. It is also capable of autonomously detecting and simultaneously rejecting up to four out-of-band (OOB) blockers, providing > 80-dB rejection for two blockers (45 dB from the bandpass filter (BPF) and > 35 dB from the notch filter) and > 65 dB for four blockers (the notch filter provides > 20 dB) for blockers as close as 1. 25 GHz to the desired signal to enhance SDR robustness in crowded spectral environments. Moreover, signal downconversion and compensation for photonics-based losses yield an in-band spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 50 dB over 5-GHz bandwidth (BW) and an error vector magnitude (EVM) measurement of −30 dB when processing a 100-MSymbol/s 64-QAM signal under the influence of two −10-dBm OOB blockers at 5- and 10-GHz offsets. Based on the agreement between simulation and measurement results, this article discusses link optimization and provides a recommendation for improvements in SFDR.