A W-Band Scalable 1 × 4 Phased-Array Transmitter Front-End with >15/17 dBm OP _1dB /P _sat in SiGe BiCMOS

Due to the relatively low atmospheric attenuation, about $0.4 \mathrm{~dB} / \mathrm{km}$ at sea level, W-band frequencies in general and 94 GHz in particular have been widely used in various phased-array systems, including communication [1], radar [2] and imaging. Some highly integrated phased-arrays [1–4] and the associated scalability techniques [1], [5] have been implemented at 94 GHz. However, most of the silicon-based phased-arrays at W -band have low output-referred 1-dB compression point $\left(\mathrm{OP}_{1 \mathrm{~dB}}\right)$ and saturated output power $\left(\mathrm{P}_{\text {sat }}\right)$. It is widely known that the array scale needs to be doubled to obtain the same effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) when the output power per channel drops by 6 dB. This will result in larger power consumption and chip area.