A Wideband 131–173-GHz Five Frequency-Channel 2 × 40-Gb/s Dual-Receiver for Point-to-Point Communication Systems in RFSOI

This article presents an ultrawideband 131–173-GHz dual-channel receiver implemented in GlobalFoundaries 45RFSOI technology for sub-THz sixth-generation (6G) applications. This system employs two V/H channels, each consisting of three-stage LNAs, a mixer, and an IF amplifier, and with a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times 6$ </tex-math></inline-formula> local oscillator (LO) frequency multiplier to reduce the chip LO input frequency to 17–23 GHz. The receiver achieves a state-of-the-art minimum NF of 5.7 dB with a gain of 24.4 dB, an <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {IP}_{1\text {dB}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of −32.5 to −28 dBm, and an IIP3 of −21 to −20 dBm. A maximum data rate of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2 \times 40$ </tex-math></inline-formula> Gb/s is achieved with 32 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulation and error vector magnitudes (EVMs) of 13.5%, 11.3%, 9.8%, 10.3%, and 10.8% in 8-GHz frequency bands centered at 136, 144, 152, 160, and 168 GHz, respectively. The chip core area is <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.77~\text {mm}^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and consumes 297, with 179 mW consumed in the LO path. To the authors’ knowledge, this work achieves the lowest NF across a wide frequency range among other D-band fully integrated receive channels.