An Integrated Subharmonic Coupled-Oscillator Scheme for a 60-GHz Phased-Array Transmitter

Abstract

This paper describes the design of an integrated coupled-oscillator array in SiGe for millimeter-wave applications. The design focuses on a scalable radio architecture where multiple dies are tiled to form larger arrays. A 2 × 2 oscillator array for a 60-GHz transmitter is fabricated with integrated power amplifiers and on-chip antennas. To lock between multiple dies, an injection-locking scheme appropriate for wire-bond interconnects is described. The 2 × 2 array demonstrates a 200–MHz locking range and 1 × 4 array formed by two adjacent chips has a 60-MHz locking range. The phase noise of the coupled oscillators is below 100 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset when locked to an external reference. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the highest frequency demonstration of coupled oscillators fabricated in a conventional silicon integrated-circuit process.

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