Synthetic Ultra-Wideband Integrated Pulse Generator for Millimeter-Wave Imaging Applications

This work presents three integrated pulse generators that can collectively provide a synthetic ultra-wide imaging bandwidth of 100 GHz in the millimeter-wave regime. Such a development is the first step towards the realization of a fully-integrated ultra-high-resolution imaging chip for biomedical applications. The pulse generators are designed in a Global Foundry 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS process technology and produce pulses with frequency ranges of 10-40-GHz, 40-75-GHz, and 75–110-GHz respectively. The three sub-band pulse generators possess a similar differential pulsed VCO configuration with the highest average power consumption of 40 mW.