High-performance W-band SiGe RFICs for passive millimeter-wave imaging

Author

May, Jason W. ; Rebeiz, Gabriel M.

Author_Institution

Univ. of California, San Diego, CA, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

7-9 June 2009

Firstpage

437

Lastpage

440

Abstract

A W-band square-law detector was implemented in a commercial SiGe 0.12 mum BiCMOS process (IBM8HP, f_t = 200 GHz) and was integrated with a SiGe LNA and SPDT switch. The combined LNA+Detector is 0.26 mm², achieves a peak responsivity of ~4 MV/W at 94 GHz with a minimum NEP < 0.02 pW/Hz^1/2, and consumes 29 mA from a 1.2 V supply. A low-loss W-band SPDT is also integrated on some designs for an internal 50 ~ reference. The chip can achieve a temperature resolution of 0.3-0.4 K with a 30 ms integration time and ~ 20 GHz bandwidth. This represents, to our knowledge, the first W-band SiGe passive mm-wave imaging chip with state-of-the-art temperature sensitivity.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MMIC; low noise amplifiers; millimetre wave imaging; radiofrequency integrated circuits; semiconductor materials; BiCMOS process; SPDT switch; SiGe; W-band RFIC; bandwidth 20 GHz; current 29 mA; frequency 200 GHz; frequency 94 GHz; low noise amplifier; passive millimeter wave imaging; size 0.12 mum; square law detector; voltage 1.2 V; Detectors; Germanium silicon alloys; Millimeter wave integrated circuits; Millimeter wave technology; Millimeter wave transistors; Noise figure; Radiofrequency integrated circuits; Silicon germanium; Switches; Temperature sensors; Millimeter waves; millimeter wave detectors; millimeter wave imaging; millimeter wave integrated circuits; passive imaging; radiometer;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium, 2009. RFIC 2009. IEEE

Conference_Location

Boston, MA

ISSN

1529-2517

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3377-3

Electronic_ISBN

1529-2517

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.2009.5135575

Filename

5135575