68–73 GHz common-base HBT amplifier in 55 nm SiGe technology

Author

Saavedra, Carlos E. ; del Rio, David ; Berenguer, Roc

Author_Institution

Centro de Estudios e Investig. Tec. (CEIT), San Sebastian, Spain

fYear

2015

fDate

25-27 May 2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

3

Abstract

The design of a common-base (CB), power-combined, SiGe BiCMOS amplifier is reported. Wilkinson couplers are used for power splitting and combining at the input and output of the amplifier. The HBTs have three emitter fingers and each finger has a length of 2.7 μm and a width of 0.18 μm. The gain of the amplifier can be externally varied by biasing the HBTs from a 1.3-1.5 V dc supply applied to their collectors through on-chip bias tees and applying 850-900mV to the bases. Measurements on the fabricated amplifier reveal that the maximum gain can be varied between 10.91 and 15.75 dB, it has a 3-dB bandwidth from 68 to 73 GHz and an OP_1dB of -1.8 dBm at 71 GHz. The chip area is 0.8 mm² and it draws a dc power between 5.2 and 18.7 mW.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; coupled circuits; heterojunction bipolar transistors; millimetre wave amplifiers; HBT; SiGe; Wilkinson couplers; common-base power-combined SiGe BiCMOS amplifier; emitter fingers; frequency 68 GHz to 73 GHz; gain 10.91 dB to 15.75 dB; on-chip bias tees; power 5.2 mW to 18.7 mW; power combining; power splitting; size 0.18 mum; size 2.7 mum; voltage 1.3 V to 1.5 V; voltage 850 mV to 900 mV; BiCMOS integrated circuits; Couplers; Gain; Gain measurement; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Silicon germanium; Transmission line measurements; BiCMOS integrated circuits; E-band; Millimeter wave integrated circuits; amplifiers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Millimeter Waves (GSMM), 2015 Global Symposium On

Conference_Location

Montreal, QC

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/GSMM.2015.7175107

Filename

7175107