An 18.7-Gb/s 60-GHz OOK Demodulator in 65-nm CMOS for Wireless Network-on-Chip

This paper presents a high-efficiency 60-GHz on-off keying (OOK) demodulator for high-speed short-range wireless communications such as wireless network-on-chip (WiNoC) applications. Targeting at data rates of beyond 16 Gb/s, the OOK demodulator consists of a wideband envelope detector (ED) and a single-stage baseband (BB) peaking amplifier. Novel dual gain-boosting techniques improve the gain, bandwidth, and out-of-band rejection of the ED. In addition, an actively-enhanced tunable inductor (AETI) load in the BB amplifier not only significantly reduces its area overhead, but also provides a tunable peaking level. Fabricated in a 65-nm bulk CMOS process, the OOK demodulator consumes only 4.6 mW from a 1-V supply, and occupies an active area of 0.043 mm². A maximum data rate of 18.7 Gb/s with a bit-error rate less than 10^-12 is demonstrated through measurements, which translates to a bit-energy efficiency of 0.25 pJ/bit.