2022年2月信息技术期刊：毫米波收发器与射频SoC创新

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"JSSC 2022.02期刊包含多篇关于无线通信与微波技术的专业论文，涉及毫米波收发器、Ka波段卫星通信、高效率功率放大器、140 GHz射频前端以及太赫兹辐射阵列等领域。" 在JSSC 2022.02这期期刊中，我们看到了一系列针对先进无线通信系统的技术研究。首先，"Dual-Band, Two-Layer Millimeter-Wave Transceiver for Hybrid MIMO Systems"这篇论文探讨了一种双频带、双层毫米波收发器的设计，该设计专为混合MIMO（多输入多输出）系统而构建。MIMO技术是现代无线通信中的关键技术，通过利用空间分集和多流传输来显著提高数据速率和链路可靠性。此毫米波收发器可能涉及新的架构或组件，以实现更高效、更灵活的频率操作。接下来，"AKa-Band SATCOM Transceiver in 65-nm CMOS With High-Linearity TX and Dual-Channel Wide-Dynamic-Range RX for Terrestrial Terminal"展示了在65纳米CMOS工艺中实现的Ka波段卫星通信收发器。它具有高线性度的发射器和双通道宽动态范围接收器，适用于地面终端。这种收发器对于提供高质量、高数据速率的卫星通信至关重要，特别是在陆地环境中的应用。第三篇论文"A High-Efficiency 142–182-GHz SiGe BiCMOS Power Amplifier With Broadband Slotline-Based Power Combining Technique"介绍了一种采用宽带槽线功率合成技术的高效率142-182 GHz SiGe BiCMOS功率放大器。功率放大器在射频和微波系统中起到关键作用，提升功率输出同时保持高效能，这对高频通信系统的性能至关重要。第四篇是"An Eight-Element 140-GHz Wafer-Scale IF Beamforming Phased-Array Receiver With 64-QAM Operation in CMOS RFSOI"，该研究展示了一个基于CMOS RFSOI（射频绝缘体上硅）工艺的8元140 GHz中频波束形成相控阵接收机，支持64-QAM（正交幅度调制）操作。相控阵接收机在现代无线通信系统中用于精确控制信号的方向和强度，而64-QAM则允许更高的数据传输速率。最后，"A 0.45-THz 2-D Scalable Radiator Array With 28.2-dBm EIRP Using an Elliptical Teﬂon Lens"描述了一种使用椭圆形特氟龙透镜的0.45 THz二维可扩展辐射阵列，实现了28.2 dBm的等效全向辐射功率（EIRP）。这一成果对于推进太赫兹通信和成像技术的发展具有重要意义，因为太赫兹频段提供了前所未有的带宽和潜在的应用场景。此外，"A 1.7–3.6GHz 20MHz-Bandwidth Channel-Selection N-Path Passive-LNA Using a Switched-Capacitor-Transformer Network Achieving 23.5dBm OB-IIP3 and 3.4–4.8dBNFH"介绍了采用开关电容变压器网络的1.7-3.6 GHz 20 MHz带宽信道选择N路径无源低噪声放大器，具有出色的输出第三阶截点（OIP3）和噪声系数性能。这种低噪声放大器对于接收机前端的灵敏度和选择性至关重要。 JSSC 2022.02期涵盖的这些研究体现了无线通信技术的前沿进展，特别是毫米波、太赫兹以及高性能射频组件的创新，对于推动未来5G和6G通信系统的发展具有深远的影响。

350 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 57, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2022

Fig. 15. (a) Measured single-element transmitter conversion gain, saturation output power (P

sat

), and PA efﬁciency at P

sat

versus frequency. Large signal

TX gain and output power versus input power, and PA efﬁciency versus output power in (b) 28- and (c) 37-GHz bands.

Fig. 16. TX and RX path IF bandwidth measurements.

Fig. 17. (a) TX output signal spectrum in 28- and 37-GHz bands show-

ing image-rejection and LO-rejection. (b) Image-rejection and LO-rejection

toward the beam-pointing angle-of-departure for a four-element TX in the

28-GHz band across beam steering range of −60

◦

to 60

◦

and RX path image rejection and LO rejection. TX output

spectrum for 28- and 37-GHz bands are shown in Fig. 17(a)

with LO frequency set to 28 and 37 GHz, respectively,

the IF frequency is set to +0.1 GHz and the TX output

power is set at output referred P1dB. LO rejection of 27 dB

(20 dB) and image rejection of 30 dB (26 dB) are achieved

in the 28-GHz (37-GHz) band. In the case of a multi-antenna

system, it is also important to achieve a good image and LO

rejection when multiple elements are turned

ON with different

front-end phase settings. To this end, four TX elements are

turned

ON in measurement in the 28-GHz band with uniform

linear array (ULA) of patch antennas (details of multi-antenna

Fig. 18. (a) On-wafer probing setup with four probes simultaneously

accessing 60 pads. (b) Setup photograph with four-element antenna array

directly connected on the RF probe head for four-element OTA measurements.

measurement setup is elaborated in Section V-B), where

weights are set to steer the beam across −60

◦

–60

◦

with a 5

◦

step. Desired signal, an image signal, and LO leakage signal

power are detected using a horn antenna RX at the other end of

the link placed at the corresponding beam pointing direction.

As shown in Fig. 17(b), over 22-dB LO rejection and over

28-dB image rejection are achieved across the beam steering

range. On the other hand, in the RX mode, better than 1

◦

and

0.3-dB I/Q phase and gain matching are achieved in both the

28-and 37-GHz bands, which translates to better than 35-dB

image rejection. Note that both the image and LO rejection can

further be improved by increasing baseband PGA resolution

or by performing additional pre-/post-processing in the digital

domain for the TX/RX path.

B. TX and RX Mode Beamforming

Next, beam steering is characterized over-the-air (OTA) for

a four-element array in the TX and RX modes using on-wafer

probing. Fig. 18(a) shows the wafer probe setup that can access

4-RF input/output pads, two LO input pads, 12 analog/digital

MONDAL et al.: DUAL-BAND, TWO-LAYER MILLIMETER-WAVE TRANSCEIVER FOR HYBRID MIMO SYSTEMS 351

Fig. 19. (a) Measurement setup for beam pattern measurement using horn antenna and four-element patch antenna array. Measured four-element (b) RX and

Fig. 20. (a) Two-stream simultaneous OTA MIMO measurement setup. Beam pattern measurement and modulated signal OTA measurement for concurrent

two-stream spatial MIMO operation in case of (b) single-layer FC, (c) single-layer PC, and (d) two-layer architecture with PC-tile.

pads, and 42 power/ground pads. Measurements presented in

Sections V-A–V-C were done using this setup. To conduct

four-element OTA measurements with wafer probing, a ULA

antenna was connected to an RF probe using short semi-rigid

coaxial cables, as shown in Fig. 18(b). The patch array is

designed to operate at a 28-GHz band with an element-to-

element spacing of λ/2 at 28 GHz. A horn antenna is used

at the opposite end of the link [see Fig. 19(a)]. In the RX

mode, a continuous wave single tone RF signal is transmitted

through the horn antenna OTA, which is then received by all

four elements, downconverted to IF after beamforming, and

observed through the spectrum analyzer. Similarly, in the TX

mode, a continuous wave single-tone IF signal is applied to

the chip, upconverted to RF, appropriately weighted to form a

beam toward the angle of departure, and transmitted OTA,

which is then received by the horn antenna and observed

in the spectrum analyzer. The horn antenna is placed at a

distance of ∼6 ft and rotated with a 5

◦

angular step along a

semicircular path (keeping the patch array at the origin) while

always pointing toward the patch array. A single-point angular

calibration is performed at the 0

◦

settings w.r.t. the normal of

the patch array. At the 0

◦

settings, complex-weights in each of

the four elements are adjusted to receive/transmit synchronous

signals, thereby calibrating out any mismatch between the

four antenna-to-chip connections. The beam weights are pre-

calculated based on the steering direction and applied to the

chip through the SPI interface. The TX and RX mode beam

patterns are shown in Fig. 19(b) and (c), respectively, for

steering angles of −50

◦

, −30

◦

, −10

◦

,10

◦

,30

◦

, and 50

◦

The measured beam patterns closely match the steering beam

and null angles with better than 10-dB sidelobe performance

(without tapering).

C. Performance of Various Hybrid MIMO Architectures

Measurement setup for on-air four-element MIMO char-

acterization is shown in Fig. 20(a). A four-element ULA is

connected to the chip, and the chip is conﬁgured in two-

stream RX mode to receive two independent data streams

352 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 57, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2022

simultaneously. On the TX side, two independent I/Q pairs of

data streams are ﬁrst generated using an arbitrary waveform

generator (AWG), which is then upconverted to 28 GHz

using two of-the-shelf up-conversion evaluation boards. The

upconverted TX signals are then transmitted through two horn

antennas that are placed at 0

◦

and 30

◦

relative to the normal

of the RX array. Please note that our setup is limited to

generating arbitrary modulation schemes only for one I/Q pair,

and the other I/Q pair can only use the QPSK modulation

scheme. On the RX side, the chip performs simultaneous

beamforming, RF domain spatial ﬁltering, and downconver-

sion. Finally, the baseband RX (I/Q) outputs of both streams

are simultaneously captured using an oscilloscope to analyze

the received data (demodulation, synchronization, and plotting

are done in MATLAB). No equalization and cross-stream

rejection were applied in software or in the digital domain for

the results in Fig. 20(b)–(d). Although the MIMO operation

in HBF is partially veriﬁed with a two-element setup in our

previous work, to the best of our knowledge, this is the ﬁrst

demonstration of the complete over the air simultaneous multi-

user communication link measurement in the literature.

Here, the MIMO operation is characterized in three different

conﬁgurations C1–C3 [see Fig. 20(b)–(d)]. In each conﬁgura-

tion, beam weights are ﬁrst computed based on the TX loca-

tions in order to steer beam toward the desired TX user while

simultaneously steering null toward the undesired TX user.

The computed weights are then applied to the chip using an

SPI interface. In each conﬁguration, the beam pattern is mea-

sured following the setup in Fig. 19(a) for each stream. The

measured patterns [see Fig. 20(b)–(d)] match the simulations,

and the two co-channel streams are decoded with high EVM

in all conﬁgurations. The transmitted streams in this mea-

surement have equal power, and the per-element per-stream

average RX input power is set to approximately −60 dBm.

The link is set up in a noise-limited state so that changes

in EVM can be observed in Fig. 20(b)–(d) as the beam-

forming gain changes between the different conﬁgurations

C1–C3. Fig. 20(b) shows that, in the case of a single-layer

FC conﬁguration in C1, simultaneous 10 ×log(4) = 6-dB

beamforming gain can be achieved from four RX elements,

thereby showcasing the advantage of an FC array. On the other

hand, Fig. 20(c) shows that, in the case of a single-layer PC

conﬁguration in C2, simultaneous beamforming gain of only

10×log(4/2) = 3 dB can be achieved from four RX elements

and two streams. However, Fig. 20(d) shows that, in the case of

a two-layer PC conﬁguration in C3, once we add the second

layer of baseband processing, per-stream beamforming gain

and EVM performance close to C1 can be achieved, thereby

showcasing the effectiveness of two-layer MIMO processing.

Therefore, measurements in Fig. 20(b)–(d) clearly show the

tradeoff present in existing MIMO architectures and the beneﬁt

of the proposed architecture, as described in Section II.

D. Eight-Element TX and RX MIMO Characterization

In order to exercise all eight elements and four RF chains,

the chip is wire-bonded directly to a RO4003 PCB [see

Fig. 21(a)]. The chip was placed inside a cavity in the PCB,

Fig. 21. (a) Chip-on-board PCB of the eight-element two-layer hybrid

beamformer prototype. (b) Measurement setup consisting of the eight-element

PCB connected to an eight-element ULA antenna array.

Fig. 22. EIRP improvement and EVM improvement across the number of

turned-

ON TX elements of the antenna array.

Fig. 23. (a) Eight-element two-stream simultaneous OTA TX MIMO

measurement setup. (b) Beam pattern measurement and (c) modulated signal

OTA measurement for concurrent two-stream spatial TX MIMO operation.

and care was taken to reduce bondwire length and loop height

for the RF and LO signals. A photograph of a measurement

setup of the eight-element prototype board connected to an

eight-element ULA is shown in Fig. 21(b). This setup is used

in the following eight-element OTA measurements.

First, eight-element transmit mode characterization is per-

formed using a continuous-wave signal in the 28-GHz band.

All eight elements are set to equal output power, and a horn

antenna is used at the other end of the link to receive the spa-

tially combined transmitted signals from the array. A single-

point angular calibration, similar to the four-element case in

MONDAL et al.: DUAL-BAND, TWO-LAYER MILLIMETER-WAVE TRANSCEIVER FOR HYBRID MIMO SYSTEMS 353

Fig. 24. Eight-element ULA four-stream MIMO measured beam patterns directing four simultaneous independent beams toward −35

◦

, −15

◦

,20

◦

, and 40

◦

Spatial null is directed toward undesired streams to achieve cross-stream isolation.

Fig. 25. Concurrent 28-/37-GHz single-element RX (a) measurement setup and (b) constellation measurements. Concurrent 28-/37-GHz single-elementTX

Section V-B, is performed at the 0

◦

settings with respect to the

normal of the patch array. At the 0

◦

settings, complex-weights

in the eight elements are adjusted to transmit synchronous

signals. The horn antenna RX is placed at the 0

◦

angular

position. Fig. 22 shows the transmitted effective isotropically

radiated power (EIRP) improvement with the number of

turned-

ON elements. As expected, the EIRP improvement is

linear on a logarithmic scale, with approximately 6-dB EIRP

improvement for every doubling of the transmit elements.

Next, a modulated (1-Gb/s 16-QAM) single-stream signal is

transmitted through the transmit array. The transmitted average

output power per element is set to 0 dBm, and the link is set

up in a noise-limited state to observe the change in EVM

with improvement in EIRP for a ﬁxed distance across the

number of turned-

ON elements. The other end of the link uses

a 28-GHz downconverter. As can be seen from Fig. 22, EVM

improvement of ∼6 dB is also observed with every doubling

of the number of antennas. Note that the downconverter EVM

is separately measured to be limited to −32 dB, which ensures

that the downconverter linearity does not limit our EVM

measurement.

Next, simultaneous two-stream transmit MIMO beamform-

ing functionality is characterized with all eight elements using

the setup shown in Fig. 23(a). The prototype chip is conﬁgured

into two-stream FC mode to transmit two independent data

streams simultaneously. Here, two four-element two-stream

FC tiles together operate as an eight-element two-stream FC.

On the TX side of the link, two independent data streams (I/Q)

are generated using an AWG and applied to the prototype

chip. Beam weights are set to direct two simultaneous TX

beams toward −20

◦

and 30

◦

relative to the normal of the TX

array. On the other side of the link, two horn antennas are

placed at −20

◦

and 30

◦

angular positions [see Fig. 23(a)].

Each horn antenna output is down-converted using a 28-GHz

down-conversion module, and the baseband RX (I/Q) out-

puts of both streams are simultaneously captured using an

oscilloscope to analyze the received data. Here, the prototype

chip performs simultaneous transmit beamforming and also

creates spatial nulls using RF domain on-chip weighting to

reduce leakage of one stream toward the angle of departure

of the other. Fig. 23(c) represents raw measurements, i.e., no

additional equalization or cross-stream rejection was applied in

software. It can be seen from the beam pattern measurements

in Fig. 23(b) that two independent beams are simultaneously

formed at −20

◦

and 30

◦

angular directions with beamforming

gain from both approaching 9 dB (maximum available from

eight-antenna elements) and null depth better than 25 dB

toward each other. Two independently modulated data streams

are simultaneously transmitted next with per-element PA aver-

age output power for each stream set at around −12.5-dB

back-off from the oP1dB to accommodate the modulation-

dependent PAPR and the PAPR increase of 3 dB from two

streams [25]. As can be seen from Fig. 23(c), two co-channel

streams are decoded with high EVM (EVM can be further

improved by improving cross-stream leakage with digital

pre-processing).

Finally, simultaneous four-stream MIMO beamforming is

characterized with all eight elements of the prototype chip

connected to a ULA. It can be seen from Fig. 24 that

successful four simultaneous beam steering is performed for

an exemplary scenario of look angles −35

◦

, −15

◦

,20

◦

and 40

◦

. In addition to increasing N

to four, the two-layer

processing in the FC tiles enables beamforming gain for all

four beams approaching the maximum possible gain with

eight antenna elements (i.e., 9 dB). In addition, over 25-dB

null is steered toward the three undesired angles of arrivals

for a particular stream, which enhances inter-stream isolation.

It should be noted that the two-layer MIMO with FC tiles

354 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 57, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2022

TABLE I

OMPARISON WITH RECENT PHASED ARRAYS AND HYBRID BEAMFORMERS

also enables STAR operation along with MIMO, which will

be demonstrated in our future publications.

E. Concurrent 28- and 37-GHz Band Operations

Concurrent 28- and 37-GHz band performance is character-

ized next in transmit and receive modes for a single element.

In the concurrent receive mode, two independently modulated

data streams from two external up-converters (one at the

28-GHz band and the other at the 37-GHz band) are power

combined and applied to one antenna element [see Fig. 25(a)].

One received stream is set to operate in the 28-GHz band and

the other at the 37-GHz band to simultaneously down-convert

both the incoming streams. The baseband received outputs

from both streams are simultaneously collected through an

oscilloscope. As shown in Fig. 25(b), for 1.5-Gb/s (64-QAM)

data rate in each carrier independently, the RX EVM is

−27.9 and −26.3 dB, respectively (peak received power is

set as iP1dB of RX). Similarly, in the concurrent TX mode,

two on-chip up-conversion paths of two streams operate: one

in the 28-GHz band and the other in the 37-GHz band. Two

upconverted data streams are combined on-chip at the input of

the PA and are transmitted through one PA. The PA output is

downconverted using two external down-converters operating

one in each band [see Fig. 25(c)]. As shown in Fig. 25(d),

for 1.5-Gb/s (64-QAM) data rate in each carrier, the TX

EVM is −27.7 and −27.1 dB, respectively (peak TX power

is set as oP1dB of TX). The above measurements demonstrate

concurrent dual-band operation for a single element. Although

the prototype can support concurrent carrier aggregation from

multiple elements, the demonstration of multi-antenna carrier-

aggregation requires designing a dual-band/wideband antenna

array (a ﬁeld of ongoing research [31]–[33]), which can be

considered as future work.

VI. C

ONCLUSION

This work makes two major contributions. First, a new

two-layer hybrid MIMO architecture is introduced, which

comprises multiple low-RF-complexity single-stream (PC) or

multi-stream (FC) tiles in the ﬁrst spatial-processing layer,

followed by an FC analog/digital baseband second layer. This

architecture mitigates the complexity versus spectral-efﬁciency

tradeoffs between conventional single-layer PC and (our previ-

ously proposed) FC architectures and enables upward scaling

of the number of MIMO streams. Second, an ultra-compact

bidirectional reconﬁgurable dual-band two-layer beamforming

circuit architecture is introduced, which includes various inno-

vative circuit design techniques. While achieving state-of-the-

art transceiver performance (see Table I), the eight-element

four-stream dual-band prototype in this work demonstrates, for

the ﬁrst time, multi-user (up to four) OTA MIMO functionality

using low-complexity highly energy-efﬁcient FC RF-tiles with

spectral-performance and ﬂexibility approaching that of digital

beamformers.

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2022年2月信息技术期刊：毫米波收发器与射频SoC创新

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