A wideband and high-linearity <i>E</i>-band transmitter integrated in a 55-nm SiGe technology for backhaul point-to-point 10-Gb/s links

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a wideband and high-linearity E-band transmitter integrated in a 55-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. It consists of a double-balanced bipolar ring mixer which upconverts a 16-21-GHz IF signal to the 71-76- and 81-86-GHz bands by the use of a 55/65-GHz local oscillator signal, followed by a broadband power amplifier which employs 2-way output power combining using an integrated low-loss balun transformer. The transmitter exhibits an average conversion gain of 24 dB and 22 dB at the 71-76- and 81-86-GHz bands, respectively, with an output 1-dB compression point greater than 14 and 11.5 dBm at each band. A maximum output power of 16.8 dBm is measured at 71 GHz. The dc power consumption is 575 mW. The presented transmitter is used to demonstrate the transmission of a 10.12-Gb/s 64 quadrature amplitude modulated signal with a spectral efficiency of 5.06 bit/s/Hz, which makes it suitable for use in future highcapacity backhaul and fronthaul point-to-point links.