Silicon millimeter-wave radios for 60 GHz and beyond

This paper provides an overview of a 60GHz transceiver chipset implemented in 0.12μm SiGe BiCMOS technology, prototype 60GHz antennas and packages developed for that chipset, and a 60GHz phased-array receiver front-end. The transceiver chipset achieves 6dB noise figure in the receiver and 10dBm output compression point in the transmitter. Folded-dipole and patch antenna arrays developed for the 60GHz chipset show >90% efficiencies and broad bandwidths. These antennas were attached to the SiGe RF chips, and the packaged chipset has been used to transmit an uncompressed high-definition video stream at 2Gb/s, with even higher data rates possible. Finally, a 60GHz RF-combined phased-array receiver front-end is discussed which uses a hybrid parallel/series phase-shifting architecture and which achieves full spatial coverage with reduced phase-shifter requirements. © 2010 IEEE.