Millimeter and Sub-Millimeter Wave Integrated Active Frequency Down-Converters

In recent years, the increasing amount of data transmission, the need for automotiveradars, and standoff imaging for security applications are the main factors that accelerateresearch in the millimeter and sub-millimeter wave frequency ranges. The semiconductorindustries have continuously developed their processes, which have opened upopportunities for manufacturing monolithically integrated circuits up to a few hundredGHz, based on transistor technologies. In this thesis, a 100 nm GaAs mHEMT technology,a 250 nm InP DHBT technology, and a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology, which showa typical ft / fmax of 200/300 GHz, 375/650 GHz, and 250/400 GHz, respectively, areverified for analog circuit design. In the above mentioned applications, the frequencymixer is one of the most important components. Consequently, a study of millimeter/submillimeterwave mixers is important for the choice of technology and topology.Aiming for either the next generation of high-speed communication or standoffimaging applications, different mixer topologies are studied, designed and fabricated ascandidates for further integration in receivers. The presented mixer topologies include theself-oscillating mixer, the resistive FET mixer, the Gilbert mixer, and the transconductancemixer. All these topologies have been realized in given technologies, and cover thefrequencies around ~145 GHz, ~220 GHz, and ~340 GHz. The designed 340 GHz Gilbertmixer with IF buffer amplifier and on-chip patch array antenna demonstrated the first fullyintegrated receiver in HBT technology at such high frequencies as well as a reasonablenoise figure of 17 dB. A novel 110~170 GHz transconductance mixer is characterized in 71, 72, 73, and 74 harmonic mixing modes, which allows for flexibility in the overallsystem design.Apart from the mixer designs, a transceiver, which operates as an amplifier fortransmitting and simultaneously as a down-converting mixer for receiving, is designed forthe frequency range of 110~170 GHz, aiming for sub-cm resolution in multipixel standoffimaging systems. It is successfully demonstrated in a FMCW radar setup for distancemeasurements