A D-Band Joint Radar-Communication CMOS Transceiver

Abstract

A <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$D$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -band joint radar-communication complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) transceiver featuring a dual-function mode multiplexer, a power-combining PA with high output power, a current choking high-gain mixer, a two-point modulation (TPM) frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) digital phase-locked loop (PLL) with a dual-core DCO, and a wideband I/Q local oscillator (LO) generator is implemented in 28-nm CMOS technology. In the radar mode, the RF front end demonstrates 46-GHz bandwidth (BW), and the on-chip PLL/LO generated FMCW chirp achieves a BW of 30 GHz and a slope of 30 GHz/ <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$50~\mu \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> . In the communication mode, the transceiver including the analog baseband realizes 20-GHz BW, and the image rejection ratio (IRR) is better than 40 dB. The measured transmitter (TX) saturated output power is 13 dBm, and the output 1-dB compression point (OP1dB) is 8.3 dBm. The measured typical PLL phase noise is −111.3 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset from an 11.69-GHz carrier frequency. The TX-to-RX over-the-air (OTA) modulation–demodulation measurement with QPSK and 16-QAM signals shows the error vector magnitude (EVM) of −16.5 and −19.7 dB, respectively.