A low-power 80 GHz FMCW radar transmitter with integrated 23 GHz downconverter VCO

Abstract

A low-power FMCW 80GHz radar transmitter chip is presented, which was fabricated in a SiGe bipolar production technology (f <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> = 180 GHz, f <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">max</sub> = 250 GHz). Additionally to the fundamental 80GHz VCO [1], a ÷ 4-frequency divider (up to 100 GHz), a 23GHz local oscillator with a low phase noise of -112 dBc/Hz (1MHz offset), a PLL-mixer and a static frequency divider is integrated together with several output buffers. This chip was designed for low power consumption (in total <;0.5W at 5V supply voltage), which is dominated by the 80 GHz VCO due to the demands for high output power (≈12 dBm) and low phase noise (minimum -97 dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset) in the total wide tuning range of 24.5 GHz.