A 28GHz 2-by-2 MIMO Transceiver Employing Transformer Gain Equalization Technique

A 2-by-2 MIMO transceiver array operating at 28GHz that enables the 5G New Radio (NR) communication is presented. To achieve a flatter and wider bandwidth for both transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX), a novel transformer-based passive matching networks is analysed and implemented on chip. The chip was fabricated in the TowerSemi 0.18μm BiCMOS process and achieves a RX/TX mode power consumption of 93mW/146.5mW, with a gain of 20/19dB respectively. In addition, the design considerations for the high-performance RF switch and the wideband Wilkinson power combiner/splitter are presented.