Multi-Feed Antenna and Electronics Co-Design: An E-Band Antenna-LNA Front End With On-Antenna Noise-Canceling and Gₘ-Boosting

Abstract

This article presents an E-band low-noise amplifier (LNA) co-designed and co-integrated with an on-chip multifeed antenna for antenna-level LNA noise-canceling and gm -boosting. Different from conventional approaches that view antennas as a simple 50-Ω radiation load, we exploit antennas as multi-feed passive radiating networks with direct onantenna signal conditioning and processing capabilities. Such an antenna-electronics co-design concept can potentially advance wireless front-end performance beyond electronics-only designs and opens the door to a plethora of front-end innovations. We also propose equivalent circuits to model multi-feed antenna systems and elucidate on-antenna signal processing operations. As a proof of concept, we propose an antenna-LNA co-designed architecture and explore the interactions among a common-gate (CG) LNA path, a common-source (CS) LNA path, and a pair of near-field coupled folded slot antennas for on-antenna noise-cancellation and g <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">m</sub> -boosting. In the measurements, a true V-factor radiation method is introduced as a new approach to measure the noise figure (NF) of the on-chip multi-feed antenna and LNA/RX integration. Then, we perform the conventional sensitivity-based NF measurement. Both measurements show accurate and consistent NF characterization at high millimeter-wave (mm-Wave). The E-band antenna-LNA front end is implemented in the Globalfoundries 45-nm CMOS SOI process and demonstrates 4.8-dB NF with 2.2-dBm IIP <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> , achieving the best reported FoM at similar frequencies. Furthermore, over-the-air modulation tests are demonstrated, supporting >10-Gb/s high-fidelity high-order QAM signals over an E-band wireless link.