An overview of new design techniques for high performance CMOS millimeter-wave circuits

CMOS millimeter-wave integrated circuits are more attractive due to its potential in higher integration with digital signal processing blocks and lower cost, compared to SiGe and GaAs. Meanwhile, the cut-off (f_t) frequency of MOSFETs is continuously increased along with the scaling down of transistors as predicted with Moore´s law. However, CMOS process suffers from high substrate loss and low quality (Q) of passive devices. As a result, circuit performance is hindered with degraded main block such as VCO, divider and LNA. In this paper, some new structures, such as meta-material oscillator, tunable inductors and coupled oscillator, are summarized and demonstrated to overcome these problems in designing high performance millmeter-wave circuits in nano-CMOS.