60 GHz Front-End Components for Broadband Wireless Communication in 130 nm CMOS Technology

The over 5 GHz available spectral space allocated worldwide around the 60 GHz band, is very promising for very high data rate wireless short-range communications. In this article we present two key components for the 60 GHz front-end of a transceiver, in 130 nm RF CMOS technology: a single-balanced mixer with high Conversion Gain (CG), reduced Noise Figure (NF) and low power consumption, and an LC cross-coupled Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) with very good linearity, with respect to Vctrl, and very low Phase Noise (PN). In both circuits, custom designed inductors and a balun structure for the mixer are employed, in order to enhance their performance. The VCO’s inductor achieves an inductance of 198 pH and a quality factor (Q) of 30, at 30 GHz. The balun shows less than 1o Phase Imbalance (PI) and less than 0.2 dB Amplitude Imbalance (AI), from 57 to 66 GHz. The mixer shows a CG greater than 15 dB and a NF lower than 12 dB. In addition, the VCO achieves a Phase Noise lower than -106 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, and shows great linearity for the entire band. Both circuits are biased with a 1.2 V supply voltage and the total power consumption is about 10.6 mW for the mixer and 10.92 mW for the VCO.