A Wideband 28-GHz Transmit-Receive Front-End for 5G Handset Phased Arrays in 40-nm CMOS Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 1963-2012 IEEE. This paper reports a transmit-receive (Tx-Rx) front-end (FE) in bulk CMOS targeting fifth-generation (5G) mobile user equipment (UE)-phased arrays. Block-level specifications are first reviewed based on link budget and UE array beam steering considerations, and compared against measured standalone power/low-noise amplifier and phase shifter test circuit performances. Then, the codesign of the Tx-Rx switch and antenna impedance matching is investigated for the important case of wideband dual-resonance networks, leading to a proposed topology that is experimentally verified using silicon passive test structures. A fully integrated FE prototype is fabricated in 1.1-V 1P6M 40-nm bulk CMOS and characterized in detail across digital gain and phase settings. Measurements show Tx-mode P-{mathrm {1,dB}} /PAE1 dB 14.6 dBm/21.9% across 27-30 GHz, and peak P-{mathrm{ out}} /PAE = 6.5dBm/8.8% at 27 GHz for an 8,, imes100 -MHz carrier-aggregated 64-QAM OFDM signal. In Rx-mode, a noise figure of 5.5-6 dB and an input-referred third-order intercept point of -8.5 to -6 dBm are achieved across 27-33 GHz. Normalized to area/power consumption, the achieved performance is the state of the art relative to the most recent CMOS/SiGe FEs.

published proceedings

  • IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES

author list (cited authors)

  • Shakib, S., Elkholy, M., Dunworth, J., Aparin, V., & Entesari, K.

citation count

  • 40

complete list of authors

  • Shakib, Sherif||Elkholy, Mohamed||Dunworth, Jeremy||Aparin, Vladimir||Entesari, Kamran

publication date

  • July 2019