Millimeter-Wave CMOS Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Development and its Potential Applications

The continued maturation of silicon-based (CMOS/SiGe) technology made it possible to design Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) to operate beyond radio frequency (RF), such as millimeter-wave frequencies, motivated primarily by the need for smaller area, faster speeds, and lower power consumption. This paper will present the state-of-the-art research and developments of various millimeter-wave CMOS/SiGe integrated circuits including 60GHz single-chip radio transceiver application. This represents a unique opportunity to develop low power multi-gigabit radio for communication, sensing, and also for a variety of other applications including: portable consumer electronic devices, secure body area networks and biomedical imaging. Further research efforts are focused on developing CMOS-based ultra-compact ultra-low-power wireless radio node for Body/Personal Area Networks, next generation microelectronic circuits to improve overall performance including linearity, efficiency, which could further leverage the reduction of power consumption and support even higher data rate through more complex modulation scheme.