Title Page
ABSTRACT
Contents
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 19
1.1. Overview of 60 GHz Wireless Communications 19
1.2. Motivations 24
1.3. Organization 26
CHAPTER 2. 60 GHZ RF TRANSMITTER SYSTEM 27
2.1. Previous 60 GHz RF Transmitters 27
2.2. Architecture and Objective Specifications 35
CHAPTER 3. 60 GHZ CMOS RF TRANSMITTER IC 41
3.1. Previous Works 41
3.2. Circuit Design 48
3.3. Fabrication and Measurement Results 78
CHAPTER 4. BOND-WIRE ANTENNA 91
4.1. Previous Works 91
4.2. Antenna Design 99
4.3. Fabrication and Measurements Results 110
CHAPTER 5. INTEGRATED SYSTEM OF RF TRANSMITTER AND ANTENNA 120
5.1. Fabrication and Measurement Results 122
CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSIONS 130
REFERENCES 132
Table 1.1. Standardizations of the 60 GHz wireless technologies. 23
Table 2.1. Recommended viewing distance against the television screen size. 37
Table 2.2. A link budget for the 60 GHz wireless system in this work. 40
Table 5.1. Performance summary and comparison 129
Figure 1.1. 60 GHz wireless applications. 20
Figure 1.2. Atmospheric absorption of the microwave frequency band. 21
Figure 1.3. Worldwide 60 GHz ISM band. 22
Figure 1.4. Executive summary of the technical challenges and approaches of this work. 25
Figure 2.1. Ethernet contactless RF transmitter module by STMicroelectronics. 28
Figure 2.2. WirelessHD modules by Lattice and SiBEAM. 28
Figure 2.3. Snap module by Lattice and SiBEAM. 29
Figure 2.4. A 60 GHz transmitter module with a CMOS chip and two external antenna chips on a HTCC. 30
Figure 2.5. A 60 GHz transmitter with an external patch-type PCB antenna array. 31
Figure 2.6. A 60 GHz chipset with a 16-antenna array and solder balls in the package. 31
Figure 2.7. A 60 GHz RF transmitter with a horn antenna and a waveguide connector. 32
Figure 2.8. A 60 GHz transmitter with a slot coupled patch antenna array. 33
Figure 2.9. A 60 GHz RF transmitter with a PCB antenna interconnected to a chip by bond-wire. 33
Figure 2.10. A 60 GHz RF transmitter with 256-element phased array antenna. 34
Figure 2.11. Proposed 60 GHz RF transmitter with a CMOS IC and a cavity-backed bond-wire antenna. 36
Figure 2.12. Computed free space path loss (FSPL) at 60 GHz. 39
Figure 3.1. A 60 GHz heterodyne TX chipset in 0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS. 42
Figure 3.2. A 60 GHz direct-conversion transmitter with a transformer-based PA and mixer. 42
Figure 3.3. A 60 GHz half-RF transmitter. 43
Figure 3.4. A 60 GHz CMOS 4-element phased-array transceiver. 44
Figure 3.5. A 60 GHz CMOS RF transceiver with self-calibration of gain, LOFT and I/Q imbalances. 44
Figure 3.6. A 60 GHz transmitter chipset comprising an RF front-end and baseband chips. 45
Figure 3.7. A 64-QAM CMOS transmitter with four channel bonding support. 46
Figure 3.8. A 60 GHz transmitter with on-chip antenna. 47
Figure 3.9. A 60 GHz CMOS RF transmitter with calibration circuit of LOFT and I/Q imbalance. 48
Figure 3.10. RF Transmitter architectures. (a) Heterodyne, (b) Direct conversion. 49
Figure 3.11. Power combining approaches. (a) On-chip power combiner, (b) Spatial combining with off-chip array antenna. 50
Figure 3.12. CMOS RF transmitter IC architecture. 51
Figure 3.13. PA structure. (a) Common-source, (b) Cascode, (c) Pseudo-differential pair. 53
Figure 3.14. Power amplifier schematic. 54
Figure 3.15. (a) Conventional transformer-based power combiner. (b) Distributed active transformer-based power combiner. 56
Figure 3.16. Simulation comparisons of the conventional and DAT power combiners. (a) Self-inductance, (b) Quality factor, (c) Coupling factor, (d) Efficiency. 57
Figure 3.17. Neutralization capacitance effect on S₁₂ performances. 59
Figure 3.18. Simulated transient waveforms of the power amplifier. 59
Figure 3.19. Simulated S-parameter results of the power amplifier. 60
Figure 3.20. Simulated power transfer characteristic of the power amplifier. 60
Figure 3.21. RF up-converter architectures. (a) Digital modulator, (b) Analog modulator. 62
Figure 3.22. Signal spectrum of modulation and demodulation. (a) modulation, (b) demodulation. 63
Figure 3.23. Conventional active mixer. 65
Figure 3.24. Up-conversion passive mixer. 65
Figure 3.25. Comparison of the dc bias voltages of the nFET and pFET passive mixers. 67
Figure 3.26. Comparison of the OP1dB of the nFET and pFET passive mixers.[이미지참조] 67
Figure 3.27. Voltage DAC for IQ amplitude mismatch calibration. 68
Figure 3.28. Simulated result of the calibrated image-rejection ratio. 69
Figure 3.29. Output signal routings of the mixer. 70
Figure 3.30. Simulated phase-shift characteristics of the signal routings in the mixer. 71
Figure 3.31. QVCO with parallel coupling network. 72
Figure 3.32. QVCO with diode-coupling network. 73
Figure 3.33. Coupling diode operation in the QVCO. 74
Figure 3.34. Simulated waveforms of the QVCO with the diode coupling network. 75
Figure 3.35. Phase-tunable LO buffer. 75
Figure 3.36. Simulated phase tunability of the phase-tunable LO buffer. 76
Figure 3.37. CMOS RF transmitter layout. 77
Figure 3.38. Simulated power transfer characteristic of the CMOS RF transmitter. 77
Figure 3.39. Die micrograph of the stand-alone power amplifier. 79
Figure 3.40. Measurement setup for the stand-alone power amplifier. 79
Figure 3.41. Measured S-parameter of the stand-alone power amplifier. 80
Figure 3.42. Measured power transfer characteristic of the stand-alone power amplifier. 80
Figure 3.43. Die micrograph of CMOS RF transmitter IC. 82
Figure 3.44. Evaluation board for on-wafer measurement. 82
Figure 3.45. Probe station. (a) Full view, (b) Chip focused view. 83
Figure 3.46. Measurement setup for OP1dB of the RF transmitter.[이미지참조] 84
Figure 3.47. (a) Measurement of the output power level of the OML source module, (b) Measurement of the interconnection loss induced by the cable and RF probe. 85
Figure 3.48. Measured output spectrum of the CMOS RF transmitter. 86
Figure 3.49. Measured output spectrum of the CMOS RF transmitter. (a) Before calibration, (b) After calibration. 87
Figure 3.50. Measured transfer characteristic of the CMOS RF transmitter. 88
Figure 3.51. Operating band of the CMOS RF transmitter. 89
Figure 3.52. Measured tuning range of the QVCO. 89
Figure 3.53. Measured phase noise of the QVCO. 90
Figure 4.1. A full-loop two-bond-wire antenna. 92
Figure 4.2. A 40 GHz half-loop bond-wire antenna on silicon. 93
Figure 4.3. A 40 GHz Yagi-Uda bond-wire antenna. 94
Figure 4.4. A 120 GHz dipole bond-wire antenna. 95
Figure 4.5. A 37–66 GHz V-shaped two monopole bond-wire antenna. 95
Figure 4.6. A 60 GHz triangle-shaped full-loop bond-wire antenna. 96
Figure 4.7. A 60 GHz helical-shaped bond-wire antenna. 97
Figure 4.8. A 200 GHz vertical monopole antenna. 97
Figure 4.9. A 60 GHz circularly polarized bond-wire antenna. 98
Figure 4.10. Exploded view of the cavity-backed bond-wire antenna. (w = 25, l = 16, h₁ = 8.9, h₂ = 7, wc = 9.8, lc = 8.17, hc = 2.33, in mm)[이미지참조] 101
Figure 4.11. Structure of the half-loop antenna. (a) Single half-loop bond-wire antenna, (b) Dual half-loop bond-wire antenna. 102
Figure 4.12. Simulation comparison of the single and dual half-loop bond-wires. (a) S₁₁, (b) Impedance in Smith chart. 103
Figure 4.13. Effects of the bond-wire length variation on S₁₁. (a) The bond-wire height is 0.5 mm, (b) The bond-wire height is 0.7 mm. 105
Figure 4.14. Bond-wire shape. (a) Sawtooth shape, (b) Circular shape. 106
Figure 4.15. Simulated antenna gains of the circular and sawtooth shaped antennas. 106
Figure 4.16. Simulated result with respect to the cavity dimensions lf and lb. (a) Definitions of the investigated dimension parameters. (b) 2-D contour plot of the antenna...[이미지참조] 108
Figure 4.17. Effects of the h₂ on the radiation beam pattern. 109
Figure 4.18. Dual half-loop bond-wire antenna with the cavity (a) after assembled and (b) before assembled. 111
Figure 4.19. Top view of the dual half-loop bond-wire antenna. 112
Figure 4.20. (a) Anechoic chamber test setup for the radiation pattern, (b) Focused view of the antenna installed on a holder. 113
Figure 4.21. Measured S₁₁ characteristics of the antenna (a) without the cavity and (b) with the cavity. 114
Figure 4.22. Simulated and measured radiation patterns of the antenna without the cavity and with the cavity. (a) θ dependence (ϕ = 90°), (b) ϕ dependence (θ = 90°). 116
Figure 4.23. Measured radiation pattern of the antenna without the cavity. (a) ϕ dependence (θ = 90°), (b) θ dependence (ϕ = 90°). 117
Figure 4.24. Measured radiation pattern of the antenna with the cavity. (a) ϕ dependence (θ = 90°), (b) θ dependence (ϕ = 90°). 118
Figure 4.25. Cavity effects on the antenna bandwidth. 119
Figure 4.26. Measured beam-width and gain characteristics of the antenna with the cavity. 119
Figure 5.1. Integrated assembly module of the proposed 60 GHz RF transmitter. 121
Figure 5.2. Integrated module of the 60 GHz RF transmitter. (a) Bird-eye photo looking at the outside cavity with an opening on the front side. (b) PCB with the CMOS RF chip... 124
Figure 5.3. Path loss measurement. 125
Figure 5.4. Measurement setup for the 60 GHz transmitter module of this work. 125
Figure 5.5. Photograph of the measurement station. 126
Figure 5.6. Measured spectrum of the over-the-air link test. 127
Figure 5.7. Measured received power against the link distance. 128