A Highly Integrated 60 GHz 6-Channel Transceiver With Antenna in Package for Smart Sensing and Short-Range Communications

This work presents a highly integrated 57-64 GHz 4-channel receiver 2-channel transmitter chip targeting short range sensing and large bandwidth communications. The chip is housed in an embedded wafer level ball grid array package. The package includes 6 integrated patch antennas realized with a metal redistribution layer. The receiver patch antennas have a combined antenna gain of ≈10 dBi while each transmitter antenna has a gain of ≈6 dBi. The chip features a wide tuning range integrated VCO with a measured phase noise lower than -80 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset. Each of the differential transmitter channels shows a measured output power of 2-5 dBm over the complete frequency range. In addition, one transmitter channel features a modulator that can be digitally programmed to operate in either radar or communication mode. Each of the receiver channels has a measured conversion gain of 19 dB, a single-side-band noise figure of less than 10 dB and an input referred 1 dB compression point of less than 10 dBm. With all channels turned on the chip consumes a current of 300 mA from a 3.3 V supply. The functionality of the chip is demonstrated for both sensing and short range wireless communications.

[1]  Gerhard Krieger,et al.  Errata: Digital Beamforming on Receive: Techniques and Optimization Strategies for High-Resolution Wide-Swath SAR Imaging , 2009 .

[2]  R. Weigel,et al.  Antenna array in eWLB for 61 GHz FMCW radar , 2013, 2013 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference Proceedings (APMC).

[3]  Jennifer Pham,et al.  A compact antenna-in-package 60-GHz SiGe BiCMOS radio , 2014, 2014 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium.

[4]  V. P. Trivedi,et al.  An RCP Packaged Transceiver Chipset for Automotive LRR and SRR Systems in SiGe BiCMOS Technology , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[5]  Duixian Liu,et al.  A Fully-Integrated 16-Element Phased-Array Receiver in SiGe BiCMOS for 60-GHz Communications , 2010, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[6]  Gerhard Krieger,et al.  Digital Beamforming on Receive: Techniques and Optimization Strategies for High-Resolution Wide-Swath SAR Imaging , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.

[7]  P.D.L. Beasley,et al.  The Influence of Transmitter Phase Noise on FMCW Radar Performance , 2006, 2006 European Radar Conference.

[8]  Kenichi Okada,et al.  Full Four-Channel 6.3-Gb/s 60-GHz CMOS Transceiver With Low-Power Analog and Digital Baseband Circuitry , 2013, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[9]  J. Bock,et al.  SiGe bipolar technology for automotive radar applications , 2004, Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology, 2004. Proceedings of the 2004 Meeting.

[10]  Steven Brebels,et al.  A low-power radio chipset in 40nm LP CMOS with beamforming for 60GHz high-data-rate wireless communication , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers.

[11]  Robert Weigel,et al.  A D-band transceiver front-end for broadband applications in a 0.35μm SiGe bipolar technology , 2014, 2014 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium.

[12]  Carmine Clemente,et al.  'The Micro-Doppler Effect in Radar' by V.C. Chen , 2012 .

[13]  Mohammad Fakharzadeh,et al.  A 60 GHz, 802.11ad/WiGig-Compliant Transceiver for Infrastructure and Mobile Applications in 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS , 2015, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[14]  H.-M. Rein,et al.  Fully integrated SiGe VCOs with powerful output buffer for 77-GHz automotive Radar systems and applications around 100 GHz , 2004, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[15]  Koichiro Tanaka,et al.  A fully integrated 60GHz CMOS transceiver chipset based on WiGig/IEEE802.11ad with built-in self calibration for mobile applications , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers.

[16]  Duixian Liu,et al.  Low-cost antenna-in-package solutions for 60-GHz phased-array systems , 2010, 19th Topical Meeting on Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging and Systems.

[17]  I. Nasr,et al.  A Highly Integrated 60-GHz 6-Channel Transceiver Chip in 0.35 µm SiGe Technology for Smart Sensing and Short-Range Communications , 2015, 2015 IEEE Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium (CSICS).

[18]  Y. Baeyens,et al.  A 16-element W-band phased array transceiver chipset with flip-chip PCB integrated antennas for multi-gigabit data links , 2015, 2015 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC).

[19]  Maryam Rofougaran,et al.  A 16TX/16RX 60 GHz 802.11ad Chipset With Single Coaxial Interface and Polarization Diversity , 2014, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[20]  L. Weinberg,et al.  Digital multiple beamforming techniques for radar , 1978 .