An ultra-wideband harmonic radiator with a tuning range of 62GHz (28.3%) at 220GHz

An ultra-wideband mm-wave voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) is presented. By utilizing an optimum design of the passives embedding around the core transistor in a Colpitts structure, the VCO tuning range is enhanced. The impact of DC bias on the tuning bandwidth is discussed. The generated second harmonic is efficiently extracted and radiated using a wideband slot antenna. The chip is fabricated in a 55nm BiCMOS process. A state-of-the-art tuning bandwidth of 62.1GHz (28.3%) at a center frequency of 219.6GHz is achieved. With a measured peak radiated power of −3.7dBm, a DC to radiated power efficiency of 0.52% is obtained. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest VCO bandwidth at mm-wave frequencies compared to the state of the art.

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