A G-Band Wideband Bidirectional Transceiver Front-End in 40-nm CMOS

Abstract

A G-band wideband bidirectional transceiver front-end is proposed. Coupled transmission line (CTL) and the staggered inter-stage wideband matching technique are exploited to extend the bandwidth of low noise amplifier (LNA) and power amplifier (PA). The transmit/receive (T/R) switch is realized as a single-pole-double-throw (SPDT) switch to connect the LNA and PA with good matching performance, low insertion loss, and high isolation simultaneously. The proposed G-band bidirectional transceiver front-end is implemented in 40-nm CMOS and occupies $ {870}\,\, {\mu } \textrm {m} {\times } {910}\,\, {\mu } \text{m}$ die area including the pads. The front-end in the transmitter (TX) mode achieves a measured 3-dB bandwidth of 32.8 GHz with a peak gain of 9.6 dB and a simulated saturated output power of 3.0 dBm, while the receiver (RX) mode features a measured 3-dB bandwidth of 34.8 GHz with a maximum gain of 10.5 dB and a simulated minimum noise figure (NF) of 10.8 dB. The implementation of the bidirectional transceiver front-end demonstrates the feasibility to integrate the TX and RX with a single on-chip antenna in G-band.