A 180-GHz Super-Regenerative Oscillator With up to 58 dB Gain for Efficient Phase and Amplitude Recovery

Abstract

A 180-GHz super-regenerative oscillator capable of 58 dB gain and fast switching at a rate up to 10 GHz is implemented in a 130nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. It is the fastest reported super-regenerative circuit in terms of data-rate and the first one to be packaged in a standalone mm-wave waveguide module. The oscillator has a tuning range of 6.5%, an output power of 0.5 dBm, and occupies an area of 0.72 mm2. When operated with a periodic quench signal, the circuit requires a minimum input power of −58 dBm for a phase coherent output. The circuit has a dc power consumption of 8.8 mW. QPSK and 8-phase shift keying (PSK) modulations with data rates up to 3 Gbit/s are demonstrated. The circuit is also integrated into a waveguide module and used to recover a wireless stream of 16QAM data at 16 Gbit/s, which is the highest reported in a super-regenerative circuit to date.