UC San Diego

Recent increase in demand for low latency and high data rate wireless links was the drive for the rapid advancement in >100-GHz millimeter-wave systems especially D-band (110-170 GHz) communication links. Thanks to the wide, available, unused, and unallocated spectrum (up to 60 GHz), emerging applications such as virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR), high speed backhaul communication and the Internet of Things (IoT) now have greater opportunities. The first contribution of this thesis is the development of the world's first 140 GHz 64-element fully 2D scalable wafer-scale transmit-receive phased array in CMOS technology.

The 8x8 array grid size is maintained close to (or equal) lambda/2 at 140 GHz in both x- and y-directions, hence achieving a wide electronic scanning angle of up to +/-60 degrees. The measured peak effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of the TX array is 34-37.5 dBm at 137.5-145 GHz which is the highest reported EIRP so far for silicon technologies. The RX operation input 1-dB compression point (P1dB) of -12 to -9 dBm is measured at 134-143 GHz. Communication link measured for both TX and RX operations supports modulated 16-/64- quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals with up to 24Gb/s data rates with an rms EVM less than 7% / 6% respectively.

The second contribution of this thesis is the development of a harmonic rejection mixer (HRM) operating in the frequency range 8-30 GHz. The mixer is an 8-phase mixer rejecting up to the 5th harmonic of the LO with a measured harmonic rejection ratio of 27-45 dBc. The input 1-dB compression point of the mixer is measured to be 4.2-7 dBm across the frequency range with an IF bandwidth of up to 8 GHz.