A SiGe-Based D-Band Vector Modulator for PMCW Radar Applications

Nowadays, radar systems are used for an increasing number of civil applications, which leads to a steadily expanding number of radar sensors. This increases the risk of interference and mutual disturbance. Phase-modulated continuous wave techniques (PMCW) can remedy this situation using orthogonal transmit codes. PMCW can be realized with an analog vector modulator (VM) in combination with a DAC. This paper presents a VM that directly uses 1.2 V digital control signals to enable phase shift keying without using a DAC. The VM has a center frequency of 125 GHz and is based on four compactly integrated power amplifiers (PAs).