A Fully Integrated and Digitally Assisted BiCMOS Transmitter for a 10-Gbps Wireless Link in the E-Band

In previous chapters of this book, design considerations and examples of different building blocks (I/Q up-converters, mixers, power amplifiers, power detectors, etc.) of mmW wideband transmitters for multi-Gbps and spectrally efficient communications have been given, as well as different methods to evaluate and compensate for the front-end imperfections in order to maximize the performance of the communication link. In this chapter, design considerations for the mmW transmitter itself will be provided, which consist of a combination of the aforementioned blocks. As in previous chapters, such considerations will be explained using an example: a wideband and high-linearity E-band transmitter [1], which is integrated using a state-of-the-art 55-nm BiCMOS process from STMicroelectronics [2].

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