A Single-Chip 25pJ/bit Multi-Gigabit 60GHz Receiver Module

This paper presents the first single-chip 1.5 gigabit/s 60 GHz direct-conversion receiver. It consumes only 37 mW DC power (less than 25 pJ/bit) for a die size of only 3 mm times 1 mm. A three-stage front-end LNA, implemented in low-cost 0.15 mum silicon BiCMOS technology and utilizing a novel gain-boosting technique, shows a 24 dB measured gain with a 3.1 GHz 3-dB bandwidth with a DC power consumption of only 25 mW. A DC-biased-diode-based amplitude detector is integrated with the three-stage LNA in 3 mm times 1 mm for the direct down-conversion of the 60 GHz amplitude-modulated signal. The receiver chip is wire-bonded on a low-cost organic module with an integrated antenna. The measurement results show an excellent demodulation of 1.5 gigabit/s amplitude-modulated pseudo-random-binary-sequence up to a greater than 2 m distance from the transmitter. To the best knowledge of the authors, this fully integrated single chip (3 mm²) module solution, from antenna to demodulated baseband, exhibits the fastest transmitted data rate (1.5 Gbps) at the lowest power budget (25 pJ/bit) at 60 GHz reported till date.