Comparative Analysis of Millimeter-Wave Transceivers for 5G Applications

High data rate and low latency are the key parameters of a fifth-generation (5G) mobile network. Millimeter-wave transceiver integrated circuits (IC) are the important building blocks of a remote radio unit that determine the commination distance and consume the significant value of power. Transceiver ICs include beamformer and frequency converter paths. Active phased antenna arrays with a size of up to 256 elements are employed to improve radio channel efficiencies such as data rate and operating range. In this work, a brief review of the 5G beamformer millimeter-wave transceivers ICs implemented in SiGe BiCMOS and CMOS processes is presented. A variety of examples of transceivers IC with a frequency range from 24 to 30 GHz are compared in terms of the Figure of merit (FOM). It’s shown that the CMOS transceiver ICs has a maximum FOM of $1.2 \cdot 10^{18}$Hz/W.