A 26dB-gain 100GHz Si/SiGe Cascaded Constructive-Wave Amplifier

Author

Buckwalter, James F. ; Kim, Joohwa

Author_Institution

Univ. of California, San Diego, CA

fYear

2009

Firstpage

488

Abstract

An amplifier topology - the cascaded constructive-wave amplifier (CCWA) - that combines features of traveling-wave and cascaded amplifiers for millimeter-wave applications is presented. The circuit is implemented in 0.12 mum SiGe BiCMOS. The HBT devices have f_t of 200GHz. The chip measures 330x1000 mum² including the pads. The area of a single stage measures 160times60 mum². Within a single stage, the shielded coplanar transmission line meanders through a length of 220 mum. This structure is area efficient and minimizes the distance between the input and output of the stage. In conclusion, the CCWA topology is based on cascaded traveling-wave stages that offer wideband gain previously unachievable in silicon technologies. The 26 dB amplifier provides 7 dB more gain than recent W-band work in 0.12 mum SiGe.

Keywords

BiCMOS analogue integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MIMIC; cascade networks; millimetre wave amplifiers; travelling wave amplifiers; BiCMOS; HBT devices; Si-SiGe; W-band; amplifier topology; cascaded constructive-wave amplifier; cascaded stage; frequency 100 GHz; gain 26 dB; millimeter-wave frequencies; traveling-wave stage; BiCMOS integrated circuits; Circuit topology; Germanium silicon alloys; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Millimeter wave circuits; Millimeter wave measurements; Millimeter wave technology; Semiconductor device measurement; Silicon germanium; Transmission line measurements;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers, 2009. ISSCC 2009. IEEE International

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3458-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISSCC.2009.4977521

Filename

4977521