2-Channel RF front-end design for K-band automotive multi-channel radar in 0.18 μm CMOS technology

In this paper, we present an on-chip K-band RF front-end including 2-channel transmitter and 2-channel receiver for vehicular multi-channel radar applications using a 0.18 μm CMOS process. The transmitter is composes of a 3-stage driver amplifier (DA), two power dividers (PD), and two 2-stage DAs. Each receiver includes commonly a low noise amplifier (LNA), a mixer, a balun, a variable driver amplifier (VDA), and a low pass filter (LPF) excluding a variable gain amplifier (VGA). The receiver presents a gain of 23.5 dB at 24.15 GHz and an input-referred 1 dB compression point of -19 dB. The receiver gain can be increased up to 60 dB by VGA. The transmitter shows gains of 9.8 dB and 4.4 dB for output ports at 24.15 GHz and an output saturated power of 6.3 dBm. The designed RF transceiver chip has a size of 2280 μm × 1920 μm while consuming 174 mA with a supply voltage of 1.8 V.