A 60-GHz CMOS RF sub-harmonic RF transceiver front-end with integrated artificial-magnetic-conductor (AMC) on-chip Yagi-antenna and balun filter

A 60-GHz CMOS sub-harmonic RF transceiver with an integrated on-chip artificial-magnetic-conductor (AMC) Yagi-antenna and a balun-bandpass-filter (BPF) fabricated in 90-nm technology is presented. With the AMC structure, the radiation efficiency and power gain of the on-chip antenna can be increased. The on-chip balun-BPF combines the integrated design of the balun and RF BPF to reduce the circuit size and the insertion loss. The transmitter/receiver (T/R) switch with the leakage cancellation technique is used to increase the isolation between the T/R ports. The class-A power amplifier is utilized to achieve high linearity and power gain. The sub-harmonic receiver is adopted to mitigate the DC offset problem. The probe-station based on-wafer continuous wave (CW) wireless transmission test is conducted (R = 1 m). The measured total transmitting gain G_ant+Tx and receiving conversion gain CG_ant+Rx of the integrated RF transceiver (with the on-chip AMC antenna and the balun-BPF) are 5 dB and 10.1 dB at 60 GHz, respectively. In error vector magnitude (EVM) tests, the maximum data rates of the transceiver in 16QAM mode at a 50-cm wireless link have been investigated. The presented integrated RF transceiver will be very useful for the design of a 60 GHz fully integrated CMOS single-chip radio for very-short-range (VSR) communication applications.