Broadband Si-based Amplifiers and Mixers for Microwave and Millimeter-wave Applications

Research on the development of Si-based broadband amplifiers and mixers for microwave wideband systems is presented in this dissertation.
In this dissertation, Q-improved 3-D inductor is investigated and implemented in CMOS technology. Post-processes for improving quality factor of Si-monolithic inductors are also described and discussed including planar, stacked, miniature 3-D and Q-improved miniature 3-D inductors. Experimental results show the agreement of predictable trend. For millimeter-wave applications, transmission lines in CMOS technology are also discussed and utilized to build two successful circuits in thin-film microstrip line and coplanar waveguides.
For the first time, a fully integrated CMOS cascaded single-stage distributed amplifier (CSSDA) has been designed, fabricated and tested. This CMOS CSSDA demonstrated highest gain-bandwidth product in only 0.36 mm2 chip area, which is due to only 2-stage design and helical inductors. A modified loss-compensated HBT 2-CSSDA was also first realized and demonstrated high gain-bandwidth product of 157 GHz. The total power consumption is only 48 mW with a miniature chip size of 0.68 mm2. The gain-bandwidth product of the modified loss-compensated 2-CSSDA is improved about 68 % compared with the convention attenuation-compensation technique. The performance rivals the previously reported HBT distributed amplifiers in more advanced technologies.
Broadband cascaded multi-stage distributed amplifier (CMSDA) is proposed and implemented in a standard-bulk 90nm CMOS technology. For the first time, a standard CMOS technology can offer gain, bandwidth, and power performances comparable to advanced compound semiconductor technologies (SiGe, GaAs, InP). The measured performances and comparison with recently reported state-of-the-art DAs in other advanced process techniques are also summarized in this dissertation.
A modified low-power distributed amplifier for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications was also proposed. The broadband amplifier is based on distributed amplifier with on-chip low supply voltage operation to achieve low-power performance. The MMIC is the first 3.1-10.6-GHz UWB LNA with a good flatness of noise figure and gain frequency responses, miniature die size and lowest power consumption. Then, we also demonstrated a multi-section broadband low-noise amplifier for UWB applications.
Regarding the broadband mixer, an active broadband mixer in commercial 0.18-µm CMOS technology was presented. The performance of this chip operated as a mixer represents state-of-the-art result compared with monolithic integrated mixers realized in CMOS and GaAs-based HBT technologies. The LC ladder matching networks are implemented to achieve broadband impedance matching, and the charge-injection method is also adopted to bias the Gilbert-cell core and promote the overall conversion gain.
A wideband analog multiplier/mixer was demonstrated at last. A SiGe BiCMOS broadband mixer and analog multiplier using LC ladder matching networks and modified loss-compensation method were first proposed. The SiGe BiCMOS MMIC achieves the highest gain-bandwidth product of 204 GHz among the reported SiGe, InP and GaAs-based HBT analog active mixer. The performance of this circuit represents state-of-the-art result of the MMIC broadband mixers using standard silicon-based technologies.