A 10 dBm Output Power D-Band Power Source With 5 dB Conversion Gain in BiCMOS 55nm

A D-Band power source implemented in the STMicroelectronics BiCMOS 55 nm technology and dedicated to on wafer characterization in millimeter-wave band frequency is presented. The circuit consists in multiplying by four a low frequency signal by cascading two frequency doublers. Two intermediate power amplifiers optimized at the second and fourth harmonics respectively are implemented after each doubler. A high-pass filter implemented before the second amplifier performs the rejection of the first and second harmonics to obtain a pure fourth harmonic output frequency. The measured peak output power is 10 dBm at 140 GHz with a −3 dB bandwidth of 24 GHz and a DC power consumption of 0.61 W. The total chip area is $1.7 \times 1.35$ mm 2 .