A 2 pJ/bit pulsed ILO UWB transmitter at 60 GHz in 65-nm CMOS-SOI

The paper describes a 2 pJ/bit transmitter with 1.5 Gbps data rate with Pulsed Injected Local Oscillator (p-ILO) and 0 dBm peak output power that 0.16 mm² active area in 65-nm CMOS-SOI. Input digital pulses modulate the oscillator at 60 GHz from On to Off state. The occupation bandwidth is 7 GHz for a 300 ps modulating pulses. This millimeter wave output frequency oscillation is locked to one of the numerous harmonic components of the pulse generator synthesized around 60 GHz, which permits to obtain a stable pulse to pulse phase condition. Thanks to this very non linear injection using pulses switching, a super high order N harmonic injection is obtained. With a 500 MHz input pulse data rate (N = 60 GHz = 500 MHz = 120) the phase noise is -92 dBc/Hz at 100 KHz which is very close to the theorical 20 log(N) dB increasing phase noise. The peak conversion efficiency is more than 18 % and the maximum peak output power is 7 dBm. Output pulse waveform and phases are coherent with input modulated pulses, which make this transmitter suitable for Automotive Radar, Giga bit WLAN, Wireless Sensor Networks and localization.