A CMOS RF Front-End for E-Band FMCW Phased-Array Radar Transmitter

The proposed front-end is fully integrated, included a phase shifter (PS), a driver amplifier (DA) and a power amplifier (PA). In order to improve the phase resolution, a capacitorfree and inductance-compensated quadrature generator circuit (QGC) is proposed in PS for excellent I/Q signals. Besides, the peak gain and bandwidth of the PS are improved about 20% and 30% with a series peaking inductance, respectively. To verify the effectiveness of the methods above, a RF front-end chip is designed and manufactured in 40-nm CMOS. According to the measurement result, a bandwidth of 69.8-78.5 GHz and 6-bit phase shifting resolution with the RMS phase error of 3.2-3.5 deg are achieved. The power consumption is 154 mW under 1.1 V. The output P1dB (OP1dB) of 11.6 dBm and the saturated output power (Psat) of 14 dBm at 74.5 GHz is measured which can meet a range over 200 meters. This front-end is suitable for E-band FMCW phased-array radar transmitter, due to a high phase resolution and a long detection distance.