A 37-40 GHz Phased Array Front-end with Dual Polarization for 5G MIMO Beamforming Applications

This paper presents a dual polarized 37-40 GHz transmitter-receiver (TRX) phased array front-end RFIC implemented in a 28nm bulk RF-CMOS process. The TRX front-end contains 8 channels, 4-vertical (V) and 4-horizontal (H). Each transmit (TX) or receive (RX) channel consists of PA or LNA, 5-bit passive phase shifter, coarse and fine gain control amplifiers. The TX channel shows an op1dB of 10.2 dBm at the antenna bump. The RX channel shows a noise figure (NF) of 6 dB. TX and RX channels show an EVM of -32.57 dB and -29.80 dB respectively. A 4×4 antenna array was implemented on PCB using 4 TRX front-end RFICs. Beam patterns with different 5G-modulated waveforms were characterized.