60-GHz Band Beam Forming Receiver RFIC for Broadband Communication Phased Array Antenna Module

In order to extend the communication range of the 60-GHz band broadband communication system, beam forming technology has been introduced. Due to the relatively high insertion loss and high phase/amplitude errors of 60-GHz band radio frequency (RF) phase shifter, broadband base band (BB) phase shifter has been focused. In this paper, we have developed a beam forming CMOS receiver RF integrated circuits (RFIC) with 5-bit BB phase shifter for the use in phased array antenna (PAA) receiver module employing 3-dimensional (3-D) system in package (SiP) technology. The receiver RFIC consists of a 7-stages low noise amplifier (LNA), an on-chip balun, a down-mixer, a quadrature-mixer, and a 5-bit BB phase shifter. To obtain the broadband characteristic of 2 GHz at RF (i.e., 1 GHz at BB), BB phase shifter has been carefully designed. By using fixed-gain amplifier matrix configuration instead of variable gain amplifiers, broadband and low phase/amplitude errors are obtained. The fabricated receiver RFIC in 90-nm CMOS process exhibits performance applicable to 60-GHz band broadband communication such as IEEE 802.15.3c (channel 2).