Millimeter-wave low-power transceiver designs for short-range communications

Abstract

This research focuses on the design and analysis of millimeter-wave low-power transceiver designs for short-range communications. The demand for high data rate communications is ever increasing. Furthermore, the number and bandwidth of the internal chips, including inputs and outputs, continues to increase. The communications between chips, boards, modules, and devices are mainly implemented by electrical wirelines. However, the wires and connectors limit mechanical design flexibilities and the physical and topological challenges of such wired interconnects can affect the system performance and reliability. An optical interconnection was introduced to overcome the limitations of wireline interconnections such as the bandwidth limitation, signal integrity, and losses. However, the optical connection is difficult to implement on a silicon substrate due to the need for optical-electrical and electrical-optical conversion devices. Inductive and capacitive coupling interconnections were introduced for a high data rate, low power consumption and a small chip size, but they are limited by the short distance of less than 1 mm.Wireless interconnections using a radio frequency carrier were introduced due to their flexibility and versatility. The previous works demonstrated multi-gigabits communications using millimeter-wave carrier. However, the previous works limited due to their data rate, power consumption or communication distance.The thesis proposes a low-power and high data rate fully-integrated 60 GHz OOK transceiver for short-range communications between chips, boards, modules and devices. The proposed transceiver integrates a transmitter and a receiver with a switch. The transmitter consists of a 30 GHz VCO, a frequency doubler, and an OOK modulator. The 30 GHz VCO and a frequency doubler generate highly efficient 60 GHz signal of -0.9dBm with 7.9% power efficiency at 60GHz. The amplifier type modulator is used for high output power, high gain, and high power e...