MILLIMETER-WAVE CONCURRENT DUAL-BAND BiCMOS RFIC TRANSMITTER FOR RADAR AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS A Dissertation by CUONG PHU MINH HUYNH Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, Cam Nguyen Committee Members, Robert D. Zoghi Head of Department, Chanan Singh December 2012 Major Subject: Electrical Engineering Copyright 2012 Cuong Phu Minh Huynh ABSTRACT This dissertation presents new circuit architectures and techniques for improving the performance of several key BiCMOS RFIC building blocks used in radar and wireless communication systems operating up to millimeter-wave frequencies, and the development of an advanced, low-cost and miniature millimeter-wave concurrent dual- band transmitter for short-range, high-resolution radar and high-rate communication systems. A new type of low-power active balun consisting of a common emitter amplifier with degenerative inductor and a common collector amplifier is proposed. The parasitic neutralization and compensation techniques are used to keep the balun well balanced at very high frequencies and across an ultra-wide bandwidth.
A novel RF switch architecture with ultra-high isolation and possible gain is proposed, analyzed and demonstrated. The new RF switch architecture achieves an ultra-high isolation through implementation of a new RF leaking cancellation technique. A new class of concurrent dual-band impedance matching networks and technique for synthesizing them are presented together with a 25.5/37-GHz concurrent dual-band PA. These matching networks enable simultaneous matching of two arbitrary loads to two arbitrary sources at two different frequencies, utilizing the impedance-equivalence properties of LC networks that any LC network can be equivalent to an inductor, capacitor, open or short at different frequencies.
K- and Ka-band ultra-low-leakage RF-pulse formers capable of producing very narrow RF pulses in the order of 200 ps with small rising and falling ii time for short-range high-resolution radar and high-data-rate communication systems are also developed. The complete transmitter exhibiting unique characteristics obtained from capabilities of producing very narrow and tunable RF pulses with extremely RF leakage and working concurrently in dual bands at 24.5 and 35 GHz was designed. Capability of generating narrow and tunable RF pulses allows the radar system to flexibly work at high and multiple range resolutions. The extremely low RF leakage allows the transmitter to share one antenna system with receiver, turn on the PA at all time, comply the transmitting spectrum requirements, increase the system dynamic range, avoid harming to other systems; hence improving system size, cost and performance.
High data-rate in communication systems is achieved as the consequence of transmitting very narrow RF pulses at high rates. In addition, the dissertation demonstrates a design approach for low chip-area, cost and power consumption systems in which a single dual- band component (power amplifier) is designed to operate with two RF signals simultaneously. iii DEDICATION To my beloved wife Bao-Ngoc Huynh and daughters Minh Thu and Minh Phuong For all their love and unwavering support iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would have never been possible without the help of many people. First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my advisor, Prof.
Cam Nguyen, for his guidance, encouragement and constant support throughout my doctoral program at TAMU. I would like to specially thank him for bringing me to his research group and giving me faith; hence a comfortableness in doing the research. The academic lessons I have learned from his courses and weekly research meetings have been turning into consolidated knowledge, and then valuable experiences for my professional career. In-life lessons from friendly conversations with him will always be the importance guide I need in whole my life.
His scholarly technical knowledge has been important inspirations to me for new ideas which significantly improve RFIC circuit and system performances, and for the definite shape of the research in this dissertation. I would like to thank him for kindly letting me have the freedom in searching new things beside the main researches. I sincerely thank my committee members, Prof. Robert Nevels, Prof.
Chin Su and Prof. Ben Zoghi for their guidance, comment and support, particularly during my preliminary examination. I am also very grateful to Prof. Silva and Prof.
Sanchez for all that I learned from their courses on broadband systems and CMOS RFIC design. I would like to thank Prof. Kai Chang and Prof. Huff Gregory for their helps in my circuit measurement.
I also want to thank Ms. Tammy Carda for her kind help on all my departmental issues through my Ph. v I would like to send my special thanks to Prof. Vu Dinh Thanh and Prof.
Pham Hong Lien at HoChiMinh City University of Technology, Vietnam for their encouragements and helps. I would like to thank Mr. Chris Liu, senior Manager, and Dr. Xin Guan, senior Staff, at Broadcom Inc., who have given me technical helps during the time I was in an internship at Broadcom Inc.
I would like to thank my former lab-mates, Dr. Rui Xu, Dr. Yalin Jin, Dr. Chirala and Dr.
Sanghun Lee, for their useful technical discussions and helps. My thanks also go to my current lab-mates, Yuan Luo, Sunhwan Jang, Youngman Um, Jaeyoung Lee, Kyoungwoon Kim, Chadi Geha, Donghyun Lee and Juseok Bae, for technical discussions and their jokes. My special and deepest appreciations go out to my family members to whom I owe so much. I thank my parents, Quoc Huynh and Hai Huynh for their love and endless support, not only for several years of my doctoral program but also for my entire life.
I would like to thank my sisters and brothers for their constant encouragement. My appreciation also goes to my mother-in-law for her timely helps. Finally, I would like to thank my beloved wife Bao-Ngoc Huynh and daughters Minh Thu and Minh Phuong for all their love and unwavering support; my life would be meaningless without them beside. I would like to thank the Government of Vietnam for the doctoral fellowship, and the U.
Air Force Office of Scientific Research and U. National Institute of Justice for their finance supports. Special thanks go to Tower-Jazz Semiconductor, Newport Beach, California for the chip fabrication supports. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS. vii LIST OF FIGURES. x LIST OF TABLES. xvii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .1 Background and Motivation .2 Short Range Radar System .1 Radar System Overview .2 Short Range Pulse Radar System .3 Transceiver Architecture for Short Range Radar and Communication Systems.
21 CHAPTER II UP-CONVERSION MIXER .3 Active Mixer Analysis .3 Port-to-Port Isolation .5-GHz Mixer Design .1 Single-ended to Differential Active Balun .2 Double-balanced Gilbert Mixer Cell .5-GHz Band Pass Filter .5 Mixer Optimization, Layout and Fabrication .5-GHz Mixer Performance .5 35-GHz Mixer Design .1 35-GHz Mixer Performance. 58 CHAPTER III ULTRA-WIDEBAND ACTIVE BALUN .2 Single-ended to Differential Active Balun Design.1 Circuit and Analysis .2 Design and Fabrication.3 Active Balun Performance .3 Differential to Single-ended Active Balun Design .1 Circuit and Analysis .2 Design and Simulated Result. 90 CHAPTER IV ULTRA-HIGH ISOLATION RF SWITCH .1 CMOS SPST Switch Architectures and Performance .2 Deep-n-well CMOS Transistor with Floating Body .3 Design of Series-Shunt SPST Switch Using Contour Graph .4 Wide-band SPST Switch with Synthetic Transmission Line .5 Ultra-high Isolation Switch Architecture .2 Architecture and Operation .6 10-38-GHz Ultra-high Isolation SPST Switch Design .1 Core-SPST and Off-SPST Switch Design .2 RF Switch Design .3 RF Switch Performance and Discussion. 115 CHAPTER V MILLIMETER-WAVE CONCURRENT DUAL-BAND POWER AMPLIFIER .1 Power Amplifier Fundamentals .4 Class A, B, AB and C Power Amplifiers .3 Challenges of Concurrent Dual-band PA Design at MMW .4 Synthetic Concurrent Dual-band Impedance-Matching Networks .5 K/Ka-band Concurrent Dual-band Power Amplifier Design .1 PA Circuit, Device and Bias .2 Concurrent Dual-band Output Matching Network Design .3 Concurrent Dual-band Inter-stage Matching Network Design .4 Concurrent Dual-band Input Matching Network Design .5 Power Amplifier Layout and Fabrication .6 Dual-band Power Amplifier Performance.
162 CHAPTER VI DESIGN OF SiGe BICMOS CONCURRENT DUAL-BAND TRANSMITTER .2 Concurrent Dual-band Transmitter Architecture and Specifications .1 Transmitter Architecture and Operation.3 Concurrent Dual-band Transmitter Design .1 Image Rejection Filter Design .2 Impulse Generator Design and Measurement .3 Square-Wave Clock Generator Design and Measurement .4 K- and Ka-band RF-pulse Former Design and Measurement .4 Concurrent Dual-band Transmitter Integration and Simulation. 202 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION. 216 ix LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE Page 1.1 Envisioned connectivity of a 60 GHz wireless network .2 Possible applications of short range automotive radar systems. A radar system consists of three subsystems: a transmitter, a receiver and an antenna system .4 RF pulse signal.
Antenna systems can consist of one antenna using circulator (a) or T/R switch (b), or two separate antennas (c) .6 Basic radar receiver architecture .7 Basic pulsed radar system architecture .8 Illustration of different modulation schemes .9 System architecture used for both radar and communication systems .1 Simple transmitter architecture using up-conversion mixer.2 Ideal multiplier model showing fundamental operation of a mixer .3 Implementation of mixers using nonlinear (a) and switch (b) circuits .4 Active single-balanced mixer (a) and equivalent circuit of the gain stage with base resistance rb, base-collector capacitance c and transconductance gm (b).5 Bipolar square-wave signal representing for the switching operation .6 Double-balanced Gilbert mixer schematic .7 Port-to-port leakage in up-conversion mixer.5-GHz mixer schematic .9 Transistor model including vias S-parameters. C's and L's are very large capacitors and inductors used to block the DC and AC signals .10 Single-ended to differential active balun .11 Double-balanced Gilbert mixer cell .12 Differential amplifier schematic .5-GHz band-pass filter .5-GHz mixer layout (a) and microphotograph (b) .5-GHz mixer input and output return losses .16 Measured and simulated conversion gain versus LO power of 24.17 Measured and simulated conversion gain versus RF frequency of 24.18 Simulated noise figure of 24.5-GHz mixer versus IF frequency .19 Gain and RF output power of 24.5-GHz mixer versus IF input power .20 Isolation and lower sideband suppression of 24.5-GHz mixer versus IF input power .21 Output spectrum of the 24-5-GHz mixer with the IF input power of -20 dBm .22 35-GHz mixer schematic .23 35-GHz mixer layout (a) and microphotograph (b) .24 35-GHz mixer input and output return losses .25 Measured and simulated conversion gains of 35-GHz mixer versus LO power .26 Measured and simulated conversion gains of 35-GHz mixer versus RF frequency .27 Simulated noise figure of 35-Ghz mixer versus IF frequency .28 Gain and RF output power of 35-GHz mixer versus the IF input power .29 Isolation and low sideband suppression of 35-GHz mixer versus IF input power.30 Output spectrum of 35-mixer with the IF input power of -20 dBm .1 Single-ended to differential (a) and differential to single-ended (b) balun models .2 Typical active balun circuits.3 Simplified schematic of proposed single-ended to differential active balun. Input matching and bias circuits are not shown .4 (a) Small-signal HBT model with base resistance rb, emitter resistance re, output resistance ro, base-collector capacitance c, transconductance gm and collector-substrate capacitance ccs. (b) Equivalent circuit of the active balun.
Corresponding small-signal parameters of the transistors are equal Zinb1 = Zinb3, Zb2 = Zb4. Le1 = Le2 = Le3 = Le4 = Le, Lb1 = Lb2 = Lb.5 Magnitude and phase of the balance factor K .6 Complete schematic of the designed active balun .7 Microphotograph of the designed active balun .8 Simulated and measured insertion loss, amplitude difference, phase, and phase difference of the active balun .9 Measured and simulated return losses and measured reverse isolations .10 Simulated amplitude and phase difference with different bias currents .11 Schematic (a) and equivalent circuit (b) of the differential to single-ended active balun .12 Magnitudes of Avd, (1-K) and Avc. (1-K) is not affected by the output matching .13 Simulated differential- and common-mode gain and return losses .1 RF switch model in a 50- network .2 Series SPST switch (a), shunt SPST switch (b), equivalent circuit of series SPST switch (c) and equivalent circuit of shunt SPST switch (d) .3 Series-shunt SPST switch.
