Abstract
This invited paper reviews the progress of silicon–germanium (SiGe) bipolar-complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (BiCMOS) technology-based integrated circuits (ICs) during the last two decades. Focus is set on various transceiver (TRX) realizations in the millimeter-wave range from 60 GHz and at terahertz (THz) frequencies above 300 GHz. This article discusses the development of SiGe technologies and ICs with the latter focusing on the commercially most important applications of radar and beyond 5G wireless communications. A variety of examples ranging from 77-GHz automotive radar to THz sensing as well as the beginnings of 60-GHz wireless communication up to THz chipsets for 100-Gb/s data transmission are recapitulated. This article closes with an outlook on emerging fields of research for future advancement of SiGe TRX performance.
Highlights
S ILICON is the most mature and advanced manufacturing technology in the electronics industry
In an even more extreme integration step, the 120-GHz antennas can even be integrated on the silicon chip itself [91]. This provides the least interface limitation, but the bandwidth and efficiency are typically limited by the realizable geometries in the integrated circuits (ICs) metal stack and the losses in the silicon substrate. These losses can be reduced through local backside etching (LBE) [92], which enables complex systems on chip (SoCs), such as the scalable 4TX/4RX 120-GHz radar transceiver shown in Fig. 6(c) [69]
The circuit achieves a maximum gain of 30 dB with a 1-dB compression point above +15 dBm. These results prove the feasibility of SiGe technology for radar applications in the D-band and even beyond
Summary
S ILICON is the most mature and advanced manufacturing technology in the electronics industry. The maximum frequency of oscillation fmax, defined as the point where the unilateral active device power gain becomes unity, determines the bandwidth and high-frequency properties of tuned RF blocks, such as amplifiers and oscillators. This fmax is closely linked to the transconductance gm, which is essential to achieve high gain and linearity for analog/mixed-signal circuits, e.g., if feedback topologies are applied. The breakdown voltage BVCE0 directly determines the power handling capabilities of the transistor device Parameters, such as the base resistance RB and the 1/ f flicker noise corner, have a direct impact on the circuits noise. SiGe has successfully been used in gas spectroscopy [9]–[11] and biosensing [12]–[17]
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