In this paper, we proposed low power consumption ASK transmitter based on the direct modulated oscillator at 60GHz-band. To achieve the proposed transmitter, high power-efficient oscillator and loss less modulator are designed. Moreover combined on-chip resonator and antenna to remove the buffer amplifier of the transmitter to reduce the power consumption and size. The proposed transmitter has been fabricated in standard 65nm CMOS process. The core area is 1130µm×590µm with pads. The operation frequency is 60.4GHz. The BER of 10^-6 is achieved under 50Mbps with power consumption of less than 260µW including the buffer amplifier. Using the proposed combined on-chip resonator and antenna, which need no buffer amplifier for transmitter and the power consumption is reduced to 180µW.

For the realization of a high-efficiency antenna for 60GHz-band wireless personal area network, we propose placing a CMOS RF circuit and an antenna on opposing sides of a silicon chip. They are connected with low loss by a coaxial-line structure using a hole opening in the chip. Since the CMOS circuit is driven differentially, a differential-feed antenna is used. In this paper, we design and measure a differential-feed square patch antenna on a silicon chip. To enhance the radiation efficiency, it is placed on a 200µm thick resin layer. The calculated radiation efficiency of 79% includes the connection loss. A prototype antenna is measured in a reverberation chamber, and its radiation efficiency is estimated to be about 81±3%.

A 60-GHz CMOS transmitter with on-chip antenna for high-speed short-range wireless interconnections is presented. The radiation gain of the on-chip antenna is doubled using helium-3 ion irradiation technique. The transmitter core is composed of a resistive-feedback RF amplifier, a double-balanced passive mixer, and an injection-locked oscillator. The wideband and power-saving design of the transmitter core guarantees the low-power and high-data-rate characteristic. The transmitter fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process achieves 5-Gb/s data rate with an EVM performance of $-$12 dB for BPSK modulation at a distance of 1,mm. The whole transmitter consumes 17,mW from a 1.2-V supply and occupies a core area of 0.64,mm$^{2}$ including the on-chip antenna. The gain-enhanced antenna together with the wideband and power-saving design of the transmitter provides a low-power low-cost full on-chip solution for the short-range high-data-rate wireless communication.

As a first step towards the realization of high-efficiency on-chip antennas for 60GHz-band wireless personal area networks, this paper proposes the fabrication of a patch antenna placed on a 200µm thick dielectric resin and fed through a hole in a silicon chip. Despite the large tan δ of the adopted material (0.015 at 50GHz), the thick resin reduces the conductor loss at the radiating element and a radiation efficiency of 78%, which includes the connecting loss from the bottom is predicted by simulation. This calculated value is verified in the millimeter-wave band by experiments in a reverberation chamber. Six stirrers are installed, one on each wall in the chamber, to create a statistical Rayleigh environment. The manufactured prototype antenna with a test jig demonstrates the radiation efficiency of 75% in the reverberation chamber. This agrees well with the simulated value of 76%, while the statistical measurement uncertainty of our handmade reverberation chamber is calculated as ±0.14dB.

This paper presents a 65-nm CMOS 8-antenna array transmitter operating in 117–130-GHz range for short range and portable millimeter-wave (mm-wave) active imaging applications. Each antenna element is a new on-chip antenna located on the top metal. By using on-chip transformer, pulse output of each resistor-less mm-wave pulse generators (PG) are sent to each integrated antenna. To adjust pulse delays for the purpose of pulse beam-forming, a 7-bit digitally programmable delay circuit (DPDC) is added to each of PGs. Moreover, in order to dynamically adjust pulse delays among eight SW's outputs, we implemented on-chip jitter and relative skew measuring circuit with 20-bit digital output to achieve cumulative distribution (CDF) and probability density (PDF) functions from which DPDC's input codes are decided to align eight antenna's output pulses. Two measured radiation peaks after relative skew alignment are obtained at (θ; φ) angles of (-56; 0) and (+57; 0). Measurement results shows that beam-forming angles of the fully integrated antenna array can be adjusted by digital input codes and by the on-chip skew adjustment circuit for active imaging applications.

In this paper, we present a 0.18-µm CMOS fully integrated X-band shock wave generator (SWG) with an on-chip dipole antenna and a digitally programmable delay circuit (DPDC) for pulse beam-formability in short-range and hand-held microwave active imaging applications. This chip includes a SWG, a 5-bit DPDC and an on-chip wide-band meandering dipole antenna. By using an integrated transformer, output pulse of the SWG is sent to the on-chip meandering dipole antenna. The SWG operates based on damping conditions to produce a 0.4-V peak-to-peak (p-p) pulse amplitude at the antenna input terminals in HSPICE simulation. The DPDC is designed to adjust delays of shock-wave outputs for the purpose of steering beams in antenna array systems. The wide-band dipole antenna element designed in the meandering shape is located in the top metal of a 5-metal-layer 0.18-µm CMOS chip. By simulating in Momentum of ADS 2009, the minimum value of antenna's return loss, S 11, and antenna's bandwidth (BW) are -19.37 dB and 25.3 GHz, respectively. The measured return loss of a stand-alone integrated meandering dipole is from -26 dB to -10 dB with frequency range of 7.5-12 GHz. In measurements of the SWG with the integrated antenna, by using a 20-dB standard gain horn antenna placed at a 38-mm distance from the chip's surface, a 1.1-mVp-p shock wave with a 9-11-GHz frequency response is received. A measured 3-ps pulse delay resolution is also obtained. These results prove that our proposed circuit is suitable for the purpose of fully integrated pulse beam-forming system.

We identify a broadband equivalent circuit of an on-chip self-complementary antenna integrated with a µm-sized semiconductor mesa structure whose circuit elements can be interpreted by using closed-form analysis. Prior to the equivalent circuit analysis, an electromagnetic simulation is done to investigate frequency independency of the input impedance for the integrated self-complementary antenna in terahertz range.

Millimeter-waves integrated circuits offer a unique opportunity for a holistic design approach encompassing RF, analog, and digital, as well as radiation and electromagnetics. The ability to deal with the complete system covering a broad range from the digital circuitry to on-chip antennas and everything in between offers unparalleled opportunities for completely new architectures and topologies, which were previously impossible due the traditional partitioning of various blocks in conventional design. This can open a plethora of new architectural and system level innovation within the integrated circuit platform. This paper reviews some of the challenges and opportunities for mm-wave ICs and presents several solutions to them.