Wideband Energy Efficient Silicon Beamforming Receivers for Satellite and mm-Wave Applications

Suman P. Sah

Two wideband energy efficient beamforming receivers for satellite and mm-wave applications are presented in this dissertation. Firstly, a K- and Ka-band RF phase-shifting receiver for beamforming applications is presented. Wideband design is carried out to enable a single chip solution resulting in high-data rate multiband communications. Design of each block in a beamformer is challenging in terms of the fractional bandwidth and low power consumption. The receiver chain consists of a low noise amplifier (LNA) followed by a 3-bit variable gain amplifier (VGA) and a 4-bit phase shifter (PS). Resistive feedback emitter degenerated series peaked first stage and split-inductor peaked loading is used to achieve wideband gain and noise matching in LNA. The proposed VGA uses a novel current steering gain blocks to achieve gain steps with low phase variation which is essential in phased-arrays to minimize calibration. A novel quadrature phase-shifter with inductive load is proposed based on a thorough analysis of the effect of loading conditions on quadrature accuracy. Due to its low power consumption and wide bandwidth, the receiver is most suitable for high-data rate satellite applications. Secondly, a low power, V-band beamforming receiver using sub-harmonic LO phase-shifting approach is presented. At mm-wave frequencies, lossy phase shifters in the rf path and high power consumption by the local oscillator (LO) routing network can severely limit the performance of a beamforming system. Each channel consists of a low noise amplifier (LNA), down-conversion mixer, and an 8th sub-harmonic injection-locked oscillator (SILO). Output of the four channels is combined using a 4-to-1 intermediate frequency (IF) current combiner. Significant savings in LO routing power is achieved by using 8th SILO, for both, frequency multiplication and phase shifting. Transformer feedback techniques are used in the mixer for gain boosting and LO cancellation. The SILO is preceded by a tuned harmonic amplifier. A novel triple-inductor-transformer is used to couple the harmonics from the amplifier to SILO, resulting in high conversion efficiency. The proposed receiver achieves an order of magnitude reduction in power consumption and is well suited for next generation low power and high data-rate mm-wave beamforming applications.

Wideband Energy Efficient Silicon Beamforming Receivers for Satellite and mm-Wave Applications

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