Rebeiz, “High-performance W-band SiGe RFICs for passive millimeter-wave imaging

Abstract — A W-band square-law detector was implemented in a commercial SiGe 0.12μm BiCMOS process (IBM8HP, ft = 200 GHz) and was integrated with a SiGe LNA and SPDT switch. The combined LNA+Detector is 0.26 mm2, achieves a peak responsivity of ~4 MV/W at 94 GHz with a minimum NEP < 0.02 pW/Hz1/2, and consumes 29 mA from a 1.2 V supply. A low-loss W-band SPDT is also integrated on some designs for an internal 50 Ω reference. The chip can achieve a temperature resolution of 0.3-0.4 K with a 30 ms integration time and ~ 20 GHz bandwidth. This represents, to our knowledge, the first W-band SiGe passive mm-wave imaging chip with state-of-the-art temperature sensitivity. Index Terms — Millimeter waves, passive imaging, radiometer, millimeter wave imaging, millimeter wave integrated circuits, millimeter wave detectors. I