Design Techniques for Microwave and Millimeter Wave CMOS Broadband Amplifiers

Abstract

In this chapter, various aspects for the design of microwave and millimeter wave broadband amplifiers using modern CMOS technology were discussed. Section 1 briefly introduced the applications of broadband amplifiers in wireline/wireless communication systems. Section 2 illustrated the design considerations of transistors and inductive components using standard CMOS process. The transistor geometry and interconnect were shown to be critical to its high frequency response. The design tradeoffs were also analyzed for spiral inductors and transformers in CMOS technology. In section 3, different design techniques for broadband amplifiers were reviewed. Three inductor peaking techniques including shunt, shunt-series, and T-coil approaches were compared in details. Section 4 focused on the bandwidth enhancement techniques that we proposed for CMOS broadband amplifier design. With the proposed -type inductive peaking (PIP) technique, a 40 Gb/s transimpedance amplifier (TIA) was realized in 0.18-m CMOS technology. We also proposed an asymmetrical transformer peaking (ATP) technique to achieve a miniaturized 70 GHz broadband amplifier in 0.13-m CMOS technology with a core area of only ~ 0.05 mm2. The PIP and ATP design techniques can be utilized for many high-speed building blocks in wireline/wireless communications systems, such as laser/modulator driver, multiplexer/de-multiplexer, and low noise amplifier/power amplifier. The successfully demonstrated design techniques for enhancing the performance of CMOS integrated amplifiers at microwave and millimeter wave frequencies enable further studies for various applications.