RECONFIGURABLE CIRCUIT DESIGN TECHNIQUES FOR MM-WAVE PHASED-ARRAY RADIOS

Pawan Agarwal

Wireless technology is redefining life and fueling socio-economic growth globally due to a dramatic increase in the use of mobile devices and growing number of data-hungry applications. However, the very success of wireless technology is leading to a severe spectrum crunch. Ongoing advances in the device and integrated circuit technology are enabling low-cost phased-array radios that can operate at millimeter-wave (mm-wave) bands as they provide very large bandwidth to meet data-rate demands. Future single-chip solution will require wideband circuits to support multiple mm-wave bands for a higher aggregate data-rate. In addition, low-power consumption and a compact circuit size are desired for battery-limited mobile radios as the power consumption and area of phased-array increases with the number of array elements. This dissertation presents new inductor and capacitor topologies for the design of electronically-reconfigurable energy-efficient circuits used in mm-wave phased-array radios. First, a 60 GHz low-noise amplifier (LNA) is designed in 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS process using transformer-based matching networks to minimize the area. This LNA features transformer based feed-forward coupling to improve the gain. A low-loss switched substrate-shield-based inductor (SSI) is presented for designing matching networks for circuits such as this LNA that are dynamically reconfigured to operate in different frequency bands. An SSI-based reconfigurable 71–86 GHz single-pole double-throw switch is designed in a 65 nm CMOS process that aims to minimize the insertion-loss by using tuned matching networks. This concept is extended to the design of two 25 GHz wide tuning range voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) that demonstrate the SSI performance and highlight the inherent design trade-offs. Furthermore, a low-power boosted active-capacitor (BAC) topology is presented for the design of reconfigurable circuits. The BAC effectively multiplies the capacitance of a capacitor to improve the frequency tunability of matching networks, and achieves a large quality factor. A BAC-based VCO in 65 nm CMOS process demonstrates state-of-the-art capacitance based tuning range and low phase-noise. These prototypes demonstrate a superior performance over conventional wideband circuits. The presented energy-efficient reconfigurable circuits and design techniques are suitable for mm-wave phased-array radios for 5G and beyond communications.

RECONFIGURABLE CIRCUIT DESIGN TECHNIQUES FOR MM-WAVE PHASED-ARRAY RADIOS

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