A W-band SiGe BiCMOS I/Q Receiver with Tunable Conversion Gain for Radar Applications

This paper presents an 89–102 GHz I/Q receiver (RX) containing an LO frequency multiplying chain (×4) manufactured in SiGe BiCMOS technology. The RX entails a two-stage low-noise amplifier (LNA) followed by a lumped version of Wilkinson power splitter to feed two mixers driven by LO signals shifted by 90 degrees. Quadrature LO signals are generated using a reduced-size branchline coupler. The mixing stage enables conversion gain (CG) tuning in 13.2–26.8 dB range at 94 GHz by means of pMOS transistors biased in triode region. The RX provides 13GHz 3-dB bandwidth with peak CG of 26.8 dB and NF of 11.7 dB consuming 80mA from 3.3V supply. The chip occupies 1.07mm2 silicon area.