A 71-76/81-86 GHz, E-band,16-Element Phased-Array Transceiver Module With Image Selection Architecture for Low EVM Variation
Najme Ebrahimi, Kamal Sarabandi, James F. Buckwalter
Abstract
A 4-element, compact bidirectional phased-array transceiver die covers the full E-band (71-76 & 81-86GHz) and is tiled on PCB to demonstrate a 16-element antenna array. A Weaver image-selection architecture reduces the LORF tuning range to 3 GHz (4% FBW) while covering the 10 GHz band (20% FBW). The bidirectional architecture is proposed in a scalable array with a shared image-selection IF mixer. The 2x2 transceiver die is implemented in a 90-nm SiGe BiCMOS process and assembled on PCB with a compact differential aperture-coupled feed network for LO and IF distribution with low amplitude and phase mismatch between multiple chips input/output. The proposed 16-element array steers over a ±30° range and demonstrates 30-dBm EIRP and 32-dB RX conversion gain with 1.5 GHz modulation bandwidth for 64 QAM (9 Gb/s) and 2 GHz for 16 QAM with ± 2 dB EVM variation over the entire E-band under same calibration states. The power consumption is 250 mW for TX mode and 160 mW for RX mode at each element.