Research of RF-CMOS front-end with stacked antenna for quasi-millimeter wave wireless communication

(1)提出了一种用于宽带短距离通信的毫米波CMOS辐射振荡器的设计方法。提出了一种片上贴片天线用于辐射振荡器。该天线具有平衡端口，适合于CMOS交叉耦合晶体管的直接连接。利用电磁场求解器对天线的特性进行了分析，并对输入电阻进行了详细的讨论，从而使CMOS场效应管的增益低于GaAs场效应管，也能满足毫米波振荡器的条件。此外，可以使用开关晶体管进行开/关键调制，并采用两种开关技术来实现大数据速率。通过电路仿真，验证了该系统的性能为500Mb/s，总效率为0.12，包括天线效率和电路效率。(2)采用1.8 μm CMOS工艺，研制了用于亚米短距离无线通信的A500-Mb/s12-mW脉冲超宽带收发器。收发器采用两个功能模块来降低功耗：一个是基于片上变压器的DC-RF脉冲功率转换器，另一个是异步RF基带直接解调器。采用印刷偶极子天线的原型芯片在40厘米距离上的误码率为0.001或更低，功耗小于24μW/Mb/s。

(1) A designed method of a millimeter-wave CMOS radiation oscillator has been developed for broadband short-range communication. An above-chip patch antenna was proposed for the radiation oscillator. The proposed antenna has a balanced port, which makes it suitable for the direct connection of CMOS cross-coupling transistors. The properties of the antenna were analyzed by an electromagnetic field solver, and, in particular, the input resistance was discussed in detail, so that the condition of millimeter-wave oscillator is satisfied even by CMOS FETs having gains lower than GaAs FETs. Furthermore, on/off-keying modulation can be carried out using switch transistors, and two switching techniques are used to realize a large data rate. A performance of 500Mb/s and a total efficiency of 0.12, which includes both the antenna and the circuit efficiencies, were confirmed by circuit simulation.(2) A500-Mb/s12-mW pulsed UWB transceiver has been developed in 1.8-μm CMOS technology for sub-meter short-range wireless communication. The transceiver employs two functional blocks for reducing power dissipation: one is an on-chip transformer-based DC-RF pulse power converter and another is an asynchronous RF baseband direct demodulator. The prototype chip with printed dipole antenna can operate at a bit-error rate of 0.001 or less on 40-cm distance, while dissipating less than 24μW/Mb/s.