A Fully Integrated 320 GHz Coherent Imaging Transceiver in 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS

A 320 GHz fully integrated terahertz imaging system is reported. The system is composed of a phase-locked high-power transmitter and a coherent high-sensitivity subharmonic-mixing receiver, which are fabricated using a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology (f T /f max = 220/280 GHz). To enhance the imaging...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of solid-state circuits 2016-11, Vol.51 (11), p.2596-2609
Main Authors: Chen Jiang, Mostajeran, Ali, Ruonan Han, Emadi, Mohammad, Sherry, Hani, Cathelin, Andreia, Afshari, Ehsan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
BiCMOS
Chips
Coherence
coherent imager
Detectors
heterodyne detection
Imaging
Phase locked loops
phase-locked loop (PLL)
Power consumption
Radio frequency
Receivers
return-path gap coupler (RPGC)
Sensitivity
SiGe
Silicon germanides
subharmonic mixing
terahertz imaging
transceiver
Transceivers
Transmitters
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Summary:A 320 GHz fully integrated terahertz imaging system is reported. The system is composed of a phase-locked high-power transmitter and a coherent high-sensitivity subharmonic-mixing receiver, which are fabricated using a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology (f T /f max = 220/280 GHz). To enhance the imaging sensitivity, a heterodyne coherent detection scheme is utilized. To obtain frequency coherency, fully integrated phase-locked loops are implemented on both the transmitter and receiver chips. According to the measurement results, consuming a total dc power of 605 mW, the transmitter chip achieves a peak radiated power of 2 mW and a peak EIRP of 21.1 dBm. The receiver chip achieves an equivalent incoherent responsivity of more than 7.26 MV/Wand a sensitivity of 70.1 pW under an integration bandwidth of 1 kHz, with a total dc power consumption of 117 mW. The achieved sensitivity with this proposed coherent imaging transceiver is around ten times better compared with other state-of-the-art incoherent imagers. To the best of our knowledge, this paper demonstrates the first fully integrated coherent terahertz imaging transceiver on silicon.
ISSN:0018-9200
1558-173X
DOI:10.1109/JSSC.2016.2599533