Title: ”Integrated Circuit and System Solutions for Millimeter-Wave Applications”. Abstract is to be announced.

Abstract:

In this Ph.D. thesis, feasibility of millimeter-wave single-chip radio front-ends in Silicon and GaAs technologies is investigated. The two technologies require distinctively different design methodology and modeling techniques. Such differences will be pointed out and appropriate circuit topologies will be presented.

Due to their high operating frequency, the circuits have to be fabricated in advanced short gate-length transistor technologies. Along with the down-scaling of the device, bias voltages are also reduced making it necessary to apply large-signal design techniques to almost all circuits. The importance of nonlinear transistor modeling and its accurate extraction on the success of the designs will be discussed.

The limited supply voltage also poses serious challenges to the design of power amplifiers and frequency multipliers. Circuit topologies will be introduced to avoid these limitations while maintaining the reliable operating conditions for the device.

It will be demonstrated that system performance can be considerably improved by direct modulation transmitter architecture and active heterodyne receiver architecture. Single-chip transmitter and receiver circuits will be presented to be the preferable alternatives for high performance systems. Due to the small wavelengths, distributed designs like the antenna and the couplers are also going to be integrated onto the small chip area. It will be discussed how these structures should be modified and adapted to the chip environment to avoid performance degradation.

At the end, some packaging and interfacing techniques will be introduced for millimeter-wave system integration. The inevitable need for co-simulation of the active circuits and signal transitions will be discussed.

Keywords: Single-Chip, Active Heterodyne, Frequency Multiplier Chain, Power amplifier, Direct quadrature modulator, Coupled Transmission Lines, integrated antenna, dielectric lens, 45~nm, 100~nm, 150~nm, Silicon CMOS, GaAs mHEMT