A Low Power, Broadband Receiver for E-Band Applications

This work presents a receiver MMIC in Infineon's B11HFC 130nm SiGe technology that covers the entire E-band (60-90 GHz) with its bandwidth of 32.4 GHz (59.9-92.3 GHz) | 40.8 GHz (59.4-100.2 GHz) at a 50 ω | 1 Mω IF interface. It achieves this with 28.8 dBV/dBm (565 mV at 90 MHz IF) voltage-and 24.5 dB power gain of a 2-stage cascode low noise amplifier (LNA) (26 dB) and a Gilbert cell based mixer (0 dBV/dBm | 7.3 dB). Input / output referred compression points lie at IP1dB=-36 dBm / OP1dBV=-8.2 dBV (1 Mω) | IP1dB=-33 dBm / OP1dB=-12 dBm (50 ω), respectively. With only a current draw of 25.5 mA from a 3.3 V supply (PDC = 84.15 mW), a minimum noise figure (NF) of 8.8 dB was measured at 60 GHz. The receiver's core size amounts to only 570 μm x 310 μm (0.177 mm2), while the whole MMIC, including the pad frame and RF-/LO-baluns, takes up 600 μm x 1100 μm (0.66 mm2).