SiGe BiCMOS X-band transceiver-chip for phased-array systems

In this paper, the authors present an X-band core chip in a production-ready 0.25 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology, suited for implementation in a transmit/receive module for future phased-array antennas. The very compact chip (3×3mm ² ) incorporates separate circuits for the receive and transmit paths with a very accurate 6 bit phase shifting and amplitude variation capability. Once mounted in a QFN package, the core chip achieves an excellent gain of 18 dB between 8 GHz and 12GHz, good linearity with a P _{1dB, in} exceeding -20 dBm and noise figure below 10 dB for the receiving path. In transmit mode, the P _{1dB, out} is in excess of 13 dBm between 8 GHz and 12 GHz and even 17 dBm between 8 GHz and 10 GHz, which is sufficient to drive an external high power amplifier. Additionally, an on-chip digital control is implemented as well as analog and mixed-signal functionality. The chip supports pulsed and continuous wave operation. The latter consumes 790mW in Tx or 330mW in Rx mode, with a supply voltage of 3.3V for the RF components and 2.5V for the digital as well as analog and mixed-signal components. The overall achieved performance makes this X-band core chip very well suited for implementation in next generation X-band transmit/receive modules for phased-array antenna systems.