A Millimeter-Wave Circuit Technique | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

A Millimeter-Wave Circuit Technique


Abstract:

An inductive feedback technique increases the speed of resonant circuits by 62%, allowing operation near the fT of transistors. The technique leads to a fundamental oscil...Show More

Abstract:

An inductive feedback technique increases the speed of resonant circuits by 62%, allowing operation near the fT of transistors. The technique leads to a fundamental oscillator operating at 128 GHz with a power dissipation of 9 mW and a phase noise of -105 dBc/Hz at 10-MHz offset. A divide-by-two circuit based on the idea and incorporating a sampling mixer achieves a maximum speed of 125 GHz while consuming 10.5 mW. The prototypes have been fabricated in 90-nm CMOS technology.
Published in: IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits ( Volume: 43, Issue: 9, September 2008)
Page(s): 2090 - 2098
Date of Publication: 16 September 2008

ISSN Information:


I. Introduction

The growing interest in millimeter-wave transceivers for consumer, radar, and imaging applications has motivated work on various CMOS building blocks operating at 60 GHz and beyond [1]–[5]. the maximum speed of such circuits is typically limited by the quality factor, Q, of inductors or transmission lines: a higher Q would permit the use of a smaller inductance to resonate with transistor capacitances, thus achieving a higher speed. This limitation proves serious as skin effect and substrate loss in CMOS technology prohibit linear scaling of the Q with frequency, leading to values that tend to saturate for frequencies above 60 GHz. for example, [6] reports a Q of 12 for 180-pH inductors at 60 GHz, and [7] a Q of 17 for 400-pH inductors at 50 GHz.

References

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