Building blocks for an X-Band SiGe BiCMOS T/R module

This paper presents the building blocks of an X-Band T/R module in a 0.25 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology for phased arrays. The T/R module consists of a T/R switch, two SPDT switches, a power amplifier, a low noise amplifier, a phase shifter and a variable gain amplifier (not presented). The T/R switch, SPDT switch and the phase shifter are implemented using CMOS transistors whereas the PA and LNA are based on SiGe HBTs. The designed T/R switch achieves minimum insertion loss of 2.1 dB, an isolation of 42 dB and has an input P_1dB of 27.4 dBm at 10 GHz. The SPDT switch has less than 2.2 dB loss at X-Band. The PA resulted in a small-signal gain of 25 dB and a saturated output power of 23.2 dBm with 25 % PAE. The LNA has 1.65 dB noise figure (mean) with a gain more than 19 dB at X-Band. Lastly, the phase shifter achieves simulated RMS phase and gain errors of 1°-3.5° and 0.8-1.8 dB at X-Band.