A 1.5–40 GHz frequency modulated continuous wave radar receiver front-end

Mantas Sakalas,Frank Ellinger,Niko Joram

doi:10.1017/s1759078721000118

Abstract

AbstractThis study presents an ultra-wideband receiver front-end, designed for a reconfigurable frequency modulated continuous wave radar in a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. A variety of innovative circuit components and design techniques were employed to achieve the ultra-wide bandwidth, low noise figure (NF), good linearity, and circuit ruggedness to high input power levels. The designed front-end is capable of achieving 1.5–40 GHz bandwidth, 30 dB conversion gain, a double sideband NF of 6–10.7 dB, input return loss better than 7.5 dB and an input referred 1 dB compression point of −23 dBm. The front-end withstands continuous wave power levels of at least 25 and 20 dBm at low band and high band inputs respectively. At 3 V supply voltage, the DC power consumption amounts to 302 mW when the low band is active and 352 mW for the high band case, whereas the total IC size is $3.08\, {\rm nm{^2}}$.

Highlights

The increasing demand for software defined, wideband, multi-functional radar systems requires innovation and novel ideas on how to overcome certain physical and design challenges
The reported State of the Art (SotA) wideband radar Receiver (RX) front-ends typically cover the frequencies below the X band, or between the X and Ka bands [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Special attention was drawn toward the input power ruggedness, integration, direct current (DC) power consumption, linearity and the direct path issue

Summary

Introduction

The increasing demand for software defined, wideband, multi-functional radar systems requires innovation and novel ideas on how to overcome certain physical and design challenges. To address the trade-off between the input power ruggedness and the ultra-wide band operation, a distributed traveling wave amplifier topology was chosen for the LNA design (Fig. 4).

Results

Conclusion