Design and analysis of 1–60GHz, RF CMOS peak detectors for LNA calibration

A CMOS peak detector for 1-60 GHz RF applications is presented. This peak detector tracks the output voltage of a LNA/VCO and the measured signal is used to tune the LNA/VCO to the desired frequency. Different peak detector circuit topologies are analyzed and their performance metrics such as gain, bandwidth and nature of response are compared. The peak detectors were designed for low (2.4 GHz) and high (55-60 GHz) frequency application and tested using two sample LNAs at their respective frequencies. While one of the proposed CMOS peak detectors (90 nm) exploits the higher f_T to achieve 60 GHz operation with optimal power consumption and area overhead, the other low frequency peak detector was designed in 180 nm CMOS. The peak detector is compared with the state of the art detectors. The main advantage of this detector is its minimal area overhead and power consumption.