Transceiver Chip Research Articles

Design of a 100-GHz Double-Sideband Low-IF CW Doppler Radar Transceiver for Micrometer Mechanical Vibration and Vital Sign Detection

This article presents a fully integrated 100-GHz continuous-wave Doppler radar transceiver with the double-sideband low-intermediate-frequency (IF) architecture for mechanical vibration and vital sign detection. Fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process, the whole radar chip transceiver consumes 262 mW with a size of 0.9 mm $\times2.0$ mm. Instead of utilizing a fundamental 100-GHz voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) in the chip, a push–push frequency doubler with the 50-GHz external source is adopted to drive the transceiver. Under a dedicated design on the system architecture and circuit blocks, the chip could transmit 4-dBm saturated power ( $P_{\mathrm {sat}}$ ) over 93–105 GHz with a 40-mV 1-kHz IF carrier and achieve good I/Q performance of phase mismatch $\mu \text{m}$ displacement from 1.5 m, the human vital-sign signal from 2 m, and even a small bullfrog’s hybrid respiratory motion from 0.6 m. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first 100-GHz CMOS Doppler radar transceiver chip with the low-IF architecture for the biological vital sign detection.

Design of a New Type of Optical Fiber Infrasound Sensor and Its Usage in Karst Geological Exploration

In this study, the demand of optical fiber (OF) sonic sensor is analyzed, and a composite OF infrasound sensor is proposed aiming at the detection demand of low-frequency infrasound waves in specific occasions. With this sensor, the polymer thin film and the aluminum soil can be combined to form a kind of composite film, the ECF/P interferometer can be formed between the end faces of the ferrule of the OF FC contact, the sensor head of the OF ECF/P infrasound sensor system is fabricated and then packaged. The designed OF infrasound sensor is used in the construction of a wireless sensor network (WSN) for karst geological exploration. The structure of the WSN includes the SimpliciTI communication network protocol, ADF7021 RF transceiver chip, STM32 processor chip, etc. New types of environment from karst can be sampled with this WSN. During the test, the performance of the composite OF infrasound sensor is analyzed at the beginning. The acoustic sensitivity of up to –136.73 dB re 1 V/μPa can be obtained in the low frequency infrasound range (1–20 Hz); the WSN based on the composite OF infrasound sensor has lower power consumption and faster networking speed. In addition, it can realize signal cover in karst areas without public mobile cellular networks, and send the information collected by the sensor to the data center, thus proving the fiber optic sound wave sensor designed in this study is successful and helpful for the geological prospectors to monitor the environment.

A highly programmable 60-dB gain analog baseband circuit with DC-offset cancellation for short-range FMCW radar applications

This paper presents a fully integrated analog baseband circuit with high reconfigurability intended for use in short-range frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar sensors. The fully differential baseband circuitry achieves maximum overall gain of 60 dB which is adjustable with a 3-dB step. Second-order high-pass filter and fifth-order low-pass filter are incorporated in chain and possess tunable cutoff frequencies in the range 0.1–1 MHz and 0.25–1.3 MHz, respectively. They are adjustable with high accuracy, yielding simultaneously the rejection of undesired signals and neglecting the effects from process, voltage, and temperature variations. In order to enhance baseband circuit utilization and flexibility for radar’s targets with various proximities and velocities, two operating modes are proposed for low noise and high linearity. Simulated at maximum gain setting, it achieves an in-band third-order input intercept point of $$-17\,\text {dBm}$$ and an input-referred noise of 6.5 or $$14.7\,{\text {nV}}/\sqrt{{\text {Hz}}}$$ depending on operating mode. Furthermore, DC offset cancellation circuit is incorporated in baseband chain. Implemented in a commercially available 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS process technology, as part of the large FMCW transceiver chip, it occupies the area of $$0.36\,{\text {mm}}^2$$ and consumes 30 or $$33\,{\text {mW}}$$ in low-noise or high-linearity modes, respectively.

High-Efficiency and Broadband Surface-Mount Antenna Array Concept and Prototype

A dual-polarized 2 × 2 antenna array element is described. The radiator structure is derived from a slot-coupled, cavity-backed, and stacked-patch antenna. It features large impedance bandwidth and high radiation efficiency. The array element can be mounted on a circuit board and is fed on this board by eight planar transmission line ports. The design is such that surface-mount circuit components, such as transceiver electronics, can be located beneath the antenna element on the same side of the circuit board. Therefore, the other side of the circuit board is left empty and conventional heat removal techniques can be applied to remove heat from the transceiver chips. If scaled toward millimeter-wave frequency, the concept would enable cost-effective realization of multichip-fed antenna arrays, including efficient heat sinking. The presented prototype of the 2 × 2 antenna array element, operating around 3.8 GHz, shows a measured bandwidth of more than 16% (at | S 11| < –15 dB) and a simulated radiation efficiency of larger than 90% across the band.

Fiber Coupled Transceiver with 6.5 THz Bandwidth for Terahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy in Reflection Geometry.

We present a fiber coupled transceiver head for terahertz (THz) time-domain reflection measurements. The monolithically integrated transceiver chip is based on iron (Fe) doped In0.53Ga0.47As (InGaAs:Fe) grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Due to its ultrashort electron lifetime and high mobility, InGaAs:Fe is very well suited as both THz emitter and receiver. A record THz bandwidth of 6.5 THz and a peak dynamic range of up to 75 dB are achieved. In addition, we present THz imaging in reflection geometry with a spatial resolution as good as 130 µm. Hence, this THz transceiver is a promising device for industrial THz sensing applications.

Robust design of a broadband dual-polarized transition from PCB to circular dielectric waveguide for mm-wave applications

A growing interest in dielectric waveguides (DWGs) as an alternative to commonly used waveguides (like coaxial or twisted-pair cables) for high data rate interconnects could be observed in the last few years. Especially in the mm-wave frequency range (30–300 GHz) applications with these waveguides benefit from low losses and low dispersion. Moreover, using both polarizations of the fundamental mode in such waveguides could theoretically double the data rate without the need of higher bandwidth or additional fibers. The connection between DWGs and commonly available transceiver chips requires broadband transitions from planar waveguides like microstrip lines to DWGs. In this paper, an overview of the current developments of such transitions is given and a novel low-complexity design is presented that reduces the space consumption by 35% related to recently published works. This allows an easy integration into a printed circuit board layout or a chip package. Furthermore, an extensive sensitivity analysis is presented to prove the robustness toward manufacturing tolerances. The transition is realized at W-band frequencies (75–110 GHz) and achieves a relative 10 dB-bandwidth of more than 25% with a minimum insertion loss of 1.2 dB. It is shown that these properties even hold for manufacturing tolerances of nowadays manufacturing processes.

A Fully Integrated SiGe Radar Sensor for Aerosol Flow Rate Measurements

This letter introduces a bistatic $W$ -band continuous wave radar sensor based on a silicon-germanium (SiGe) transceiver chip with respect to its ability to measure aerosol streams with particles in the micrometer range. The introduced homodyne SiGe sensor relies on a phase-locked loop (PLL)-stabilized oscillator embedded into a monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC), while up until now particle stream monitoring radars are built as waveguide systems. After the radar hardware, including the bistatic antenna configuration, is examined, the physical relationships between the particle stream and the hardware parameters are given. Finally, two different experiments with coarse metallic steel particles and fine coffee powder streams are presented and analyzed.

A Full X-Band Phased-Array Transmit/Receive Module Chip in 65-nm CMOS Technology

In this paper, we present a phased-array transceiver chip operating in full X-band (8-12 GHz) in 65-nm CMOS technology. The presented transceiver for the transmit/receive module (TRM) consists of a 6-bit passive phase shifter, a 6-bit attenuator, a bi-directional gain amplifier (BDGA), and a single pole double throw (SPDT) switch connected to the internal power amplifier (PA) and the low-noise amplifier (LNA) to serve as a duplexer. A 64-bit SPI scan-chain is integrated for digital TRM control. The transmitter achieves greater than 15 dB of power gain with 11.84 dBm at the output 1-dB compression point (OP1dB). To achieve a wideband operation of the passive phase shifter, we assigned two different resonant frequencies for the phase leading and lagging networks and aligned the slopes of their phase responses to have the desired phase shifts at the center frequency. The RMS phase error is less than 5°, and the RMS amplitude error is less than 0.45 dB for all phase and attenuation states within 8-12 GHz while dissipating 216 mW dc power from a 1 V power supply. The receiver shows greater than 15 dB of power gain and has a noise figure (NF) of less than 8.4 dB for the entire X-band. The RMS phase error and the RMS amplitude error are less than 5° and 0.45 dB, respectively, for all control states within 8-12 GHz. The receiver consumes 110 mW with a 1 V power supply. The transceiver chip occupies an area of $4\times1.88$ mm 2 .

Integration of custom DAQ Electronics in a SCADA Framework

LHCb is one of the 4 experiments at the LHC accelerator at CERN. During the upgrade phase of the experiment, several new electronic boards and Front End chips that perform the data acquisition for the experiment will be added by the different sub-detectors. These new devices will be controlled and monitored via a system composed of GigaBit Transceiver (GBT) chips that manage the bi-directional slow control traffic to the Slow Control Adapter(s) (SCA) chips. The SCA chips provide multiple field buses to interface the new electronics devices (I2C, GPIO, etc). These devices will need to be integrated in the Experiment Control System (ECS) that drives LHCb. A set of tools was developed that provide an easy integration of the control and monitoring of the devices in the ECS. A server (GbtServ) provides the low level communication layer with the devices via the several user buses in the GBT-SCA chip and exposes an interface for control to the experiment SCADA (WinCC OA), the fwGbt component provides the interface between the SCADA and the GbtServ and the fwHw component, a tool that allows the abstraction of the devices models into the ECS. Using the graphical User Interfaces or XML files describing the structure and registers of the devices it creates the necessary model of the hardware as a data structure in the SCADA. It allows then the control and monitoring of the defined registers using their name, without the need to know the details of the hardware behind. The fwHw tool also provides the facility of defining and applying recipes named sets of configurations which can be used to easily configure the hardware according to specific needs.

ВЛИЯНИЕ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЯ ЭЛЕМЕНТОВ АНТЕННО–ФИДЕРНОГО ТРАКТА РАДИОЛОКАТОРА НА ШУМОВЫЕ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКИ КАНАЛА ПРИЕМА

The influence of the interaction effects of the transmitting and receiving antennas of a mil-limeter-range radar, as well as the direct transmission of the transmitter signal to the receiver input via the internal circuits of the microwave chip on the level of the decorrelated phase noise is under consideration. It is shown that for a certain amount of interaction between the anten-nas, the delay time of signal propagation along the paths of additional reception, the receiver noise factor and the level of phase noise of the carrier frequency of the transmitter at the detun-ing frequency equal to the frequency of the useful signal, the output noise power of the receiver converter by the additional receiving channel and the receiver’s own noise become comparable. Due to the additional noise reception channel, the signal-to-noise ratio decreases and the range of the radar action decreases as well. The calculation uses data for the noise factor of the re-ceiver and the spectral density of the phase noise of the synthesizer of the AWR1243 millimeter–wave transceiver chip from Texas Instruments in the frequency range from 77 till 81 GHz. The effect of a dielectric antenna shelter on the coupling between the transmitting and receiving antennas, and on the spectral noise power density at the receiver input, is considered. The de-pendences of the spectral density of the decorrelated phase noise due to additional communi-cation channels in comparison with the receiver’s own noise are show

LocSpeck: A Collaborative and Distributed Positioning System for Asymmetric Nodes Based on UWB Ad-Hoc Network and Wi-Fi Fingerprinting.

This paper presents LocSpeck, a collaborative and distributed indoor positioning system for dynamic nodes connected using an ad-hoc network, based on inter-node relative range measurements and Wi-Fi fingerprinting. The proposed system operates using peer-to-peer range measurements and does not need ultra-wideband (UWB) fixed anchor, nor it needs a predefined network topology. The nodes could be asymmetric in terms of the available sensors onboard, the computational resources, and the power capacity. This asymmetry adversely affects the positioning performance of the weaker nodes. Collaboration between different nodes is achieved through a distributed estimator without the need of a single centralized computing element. The ranging measurement component of the system is based on the DW1000 UWB transceiver chip from Decawave, which is attached to a set of smartphones equipped with asymmetric sensors. The distributed positioning filter fuses, locally on each node, the relative range measurements, the reading from the internal sensors, and the Wi-Fi received signal strength indicator (RSSI) readings to obtain an estimate of the position of each node. The described system does not depend on fixed UWB anchors and supports online addition and removal of nodes and dynamic node role assignment, either as an anchor or as a rover. The performance of the system is evaluated by real-world test scenarios using a set of four smartphones navigating an indoor environment on foot. The performance is compared to that of a commercial UWB-based system. The results presented in this paper show that weak mobile nodes, in terms of available positioning sensors, can benefit from collaboration with other nearby nodes.

A 5-15GHz Switchless Broadband Monolithic Integrated Bidirectional Amplifier

Based on SiGe HBT technology, two broadband monolithic integrated bidirectional amplifiers (BDA) with different operating voltages (1.8V/3.3V) are designed. By adjusting the bias voltage, the transceiver and receiver of the amplifier are switched. At the same time, a temperature compensation bias circuit is added to reduce the high and low temperature gain variation of the amplifier. It is suitable for multi-function transceiver chip or T/R module. The simulation results show that the gain of 1.8V broadband monolithic integrated bidirectional amplifier can reach 9dB in 5-15GHz operating band, the reflection coefficient of input and output ports is less than - 13dB and - 17dB respectively, the output power of 1dB compression point is + 5.5dBm, the working current is 12.2mA, the gain of 3.3V bidirectional amplifier can reach + 10.5dB, and the reflection coefficient of input and output ports is less than -12dB and -13dB. The output power of 1dB compression point is + 10dBm, and the working current is 20.3mA. The core area of the chip is 0.45 × 0.45mm2.

A 55–64-GHz Fully Integrated Miniaturized FMCW Radar Sensor Module for Short-Range Applications

A compact wide-bandwidth frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar sensor module with integrated antennas intended for operation in the unlicensed 60-GHz band is presented. The proposed FMCW transceiver chip is at the heart of the radar module and it incorporates a frequency synthesizer and the analog baseband circuitry. The mm-wave radar sensor achieves sub-2-cm spatial resolutions and enables cutting-edge modulation rates higher than 200 MHz/μs. Steep frequency slopes are particularly important in the detection of close proximity targets that are below 20-cm range. The FMCW radar sensor prototype chip is implemented in 0.13-μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. It delivers more than +17.5 dBm of effective isotropic radiated power at the output over the complete frequency range of interest while dissipating 690 mW. The module is packed into 32 mm × 22 mm × 7 mm aluminum case and covered by plastic lid.

Effects of proton irradiation on 60 GHz CMOS transceiver chip for multi‐Gbps communication in high‐energy physics experiments

This paper presents the experimental results of $17~MeV$ proton irradiation on a $60~GHz$ low power, half-duplex transceiver (TRX) chip implemented in $65~nm$ CMOS technology. It supports short range point-to-point data rate up to $6~Gbps$ by employing on-off keying (OOK). To investigate the irradiation hardness for high energy physics applications, two TRX chips were irradiated with total ionizing doses (TID) of $74~kGy$ and $42~kGy$ and fluence of $1.4~\times$10$^{14}~ N_{eq}/cm^2$ and $0.8~\times$10$^{14}~N_{eq}/cm^2$ for RX and TX modes, respectively. The chips were characterized by pre- and post-irradiation analogue voltage measurements on different circuit blocks as well as through the analysis of wireless transmission parameters like bit error rate (BER), eye diagram, jitter etc. Post-irradiation measurements have shown certain reduction in performance but both TRX chips have been found operational through over the air measurements at $5~Gbps$. Moreover, very small shift in the carrier frequency was observed after the irradiation.

A 28-GHz CMOS Phased-Array Transceiver Based on LO Phase-Shifting Architecture With Gain Invariant Phase Tuning for 5G New Radio

This paper presents a 28-GHz CMOS four-element phased-array transceiver chip for the fifth-generation mobile network (5G) new radio (NR). The proposed transceiver is based on the local-oscillator (LO) phase-shifting architecture, and it achieves quasi-continuous phase tuning with less than 0.2-dB radio frequency (RF) gain variation and 0.3°C phase error. Accurate beam control with suppressed sidelobe level during beam steering could be supported by this work. At 28 GHz, a single-element transmitter-mode output ${{\mathrm {P}}_{\mathrm {1\,dB}}}$ of 15.7 dBm and a receiver-mode noise figure (NF) of 4.1 dB are achieved. The eight-element transceiver modules developed in this work are capable of scanning the beam from −50° to +50° with less than −9-dB sidelobe level. A saturated equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of 39.8 dBm is achieved at 0° scan. In a 5-m over-the-air measurement, the proposed module demonstrates the first 512 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation in the 28-GHz band. A data stream of 6.4 Gb/s in 256-QAM could be supported within a beam angle of ±50°. The achieved maximum data rate is 15 Gb/s in 64-QAM. The proposed transceiver chip consumes 1.2 W/chip in transmitter mode and 0.59 W/chip in receiver mode.

Packaging Solution Based on Low-Temperature Cofired Ceramic Technology for Frequencies Beyond 100 GHz

In this paper, a package concept based on low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) technology is illustrated. The concept is specifically designed for frequencies beyond 100 GHz, taking into consideration the inherent LTCC manufacturing defects, e.g., shrinkage, layer misalignment, and warping. Simple techniques are used for package assembly which can be automated using standard industrial processes. The proposed concept is implemented by integrating a 122-GHz silicon-germanium (SiGe) radar transceiver chip in an LTCC-based package. The off-chip components of the package, operating at 122 GHz, include a transmit (Tx) and a receive (Rx) aperture-coupled patch antenna array, a stripline to grounded coplanar waveguide signal transition feeding each of the antenna arrays, and three parallel, self-matched ground-signal-ground wirebonds connecting the SiGe radar transceiver chip and the LTCC package on Tx and Rx side. The simulation and measurement results of the Tx and Rx antenna arrays along with the signal transitions in the frequency range of 110–140 GHz are shown. The radar front end (RFE) is encapsulated using an epoxy molding compound, Polytec TC 430-T with suitable dielectric characteristics in the desired frequency range. The encapsulated RFE is surface mounted on a baseband printed circuit board, thereby realizing a fully functional 122-GHz frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar. The FMCW radar is used to measure the distance of a target, and the measurement results are compared with those of a commercial 122-GHz RFE.

An Adaptive Beamforming Technique for UWB Impulse Transceiver

A two-channel beamforming ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse transceiver chip, which includes a beam steering TX controlled by a fractional delay locked loop and an adaptive RX that can self-tune the beamforming to the direction of incident pulses, is presented. The dual-channel timed array transmitter can generate UWB pulses in two separate transmitter paths with tunable path delay difference of 0~250 ps to achieve beam-steering capability. Each beamforming receiver channel has a measured continuous time delay between 0~250 ps. The proposed beamformer could provide maximum scan angle of up to ±60° for two antennas with about 8-cm spacing. Fabricated in 0.18- $\mu \text{m}$ CMOS, the TX can beam steer across the full spatial range with resolution of 4°, and the RX can continuously scan the full range with resolution of 3°. The transmitter consumes 37 mA at 10 Mbps and receiver consumes 84 mA under 1.8-V power supply.

WSN Design and Verification Using On-Board Executable Specifications

The gap between informal functional specifications and the resulting implementation in the chosen programming language is notably a source of errors in embedded systems design. In this paper, we discuss a methodology and a software platform aimed at coping with this issue in programming resource-constrained wireless sensor network nodes (WSNs). Whereas the typical development model for the WSNs is based on cross compilation, the proposed approach supports high-level symbolic coding of abstract models and distributed applications, as well as their test and their execution, directly on the target hardware. As a working example, we discuss the application of our methodology to specify the functional behavior of a radio transceiver chip. The resulting executable specifications are augmented with automatically generated runtime verification code. Our approach is also compared to code development for two prominent WSN general-purpose operating systems.

A Low-Power Compact IEEE 802.15.6 Compatible Human Body Communication Transceiver With Digital Sigma–Delta IIR Mask Shaping

Human body communication (HBC) will play an important role in wireless body area networks (WBANs) because of its low power and low hardware cost. However, the low-frequency band of HBC transmitting signal could potentially interfere with the vital signs such as electrocardiography (ECG) and electromyography (EMG), especially for the frequency below 2 MHz. In this paper, a new mask-shaping technique is proposed for the HBC transmitter to suppress the mask below 2 MHz, where a digital sigma-delta truncated infinite impulse response (SDTIIR) filter provides sufficient rejection with a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) of only 8 bits. To save the die area, a single-ended receiver is designed with dc-coupled blocks, whereas a digital calibration technique is employed to eliminate the static dc offset. The proposed techniques are implemented in the 65 nm CMOS process, demonstrating a sub-millimeter-sized IEEE 802.15.6 compatible HBC transceiver chip. Measurements show that the transmitter achieves a rejection of -86.5 dBr at 2 MHz with 3.52 mW power. Consuming 620 <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">μ</sub> W , the receiver achieves a sensitivity of -72 dBm at a chip rate of 5.25 Mc/s and a bit error rate (BER) less than 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-7</sup> .

Multiband ultra-thin flexible on-body transceivers for wearable health informatics.

Substantial concentration has been associated to the monitoring of vital signs and human activity using wireless body area networks. However, one of the key technical challenges is to characterize an optimized transceiver geometry for desired isolation/bandwidth and specific absorption rate (SAR) characteristics, independent of transceiver chip on-body location. A microwave performance evaluation of monopole wearable transceiver was completed and results presented. A novel on-body antenna transceiver was designed, simulated and fabricated using an ultra-thin substrate RO 3010 (h = 250µm) that ensures compactness and enhanced flexibility. The designed transceiver was evolved using very high value of dielectric constant using CST® Studio Suit and FEKO® numerical platforms. The on-body characterization for both fatty and bone tissues was experimentally verified for a bandwidth of 200MHz. The fabricated configuration and real-time testing provides very promising microwave radiation parameters with a gain of 2.69 dBi, S11 < - 13 dB at an operational frequency of 2.46GHz. Multi-banding was achieved by introducing fractals in the design of the printed monopole. SAR calculations for feet, head and arm at microwave power levels ranging from 100 to 800mW are incorporated. Furthermore, the real time data acquisition using developed transceiver and its experimental verification is illustrated.