0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS W&D-Band receivers for passive millimeter-wave imaging applications

Design of millimeter-wave (30-300 GHz) integrated circuits for various applications such as RADAR, wireless communication systems and imaging systems has become an active area of research in recent years. Passive type of imaging systems have the potential to impact several areas including security scanning, concealed weapon detection and topography imaging. Therefore, high performance MMICs capable of operating 100 GHz and beyond will be the key for next generation imaging systems. Process technologies such as CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS have advanced tremendously over the past decades. Especially the SiGe BiCMOS process with HBTs that have ft=fmax values above several hundred GHz, is an excellent option for high performance mm-wave applications due to its comparable performance to III-V technologies while having relatively lower costs. In this thesis, we present W-Band (75-110 GHz) and D-Band (110-170 GHz) radiometer sub-blocks as well as single and dual channel implementations with onchip antennas using IHP's 0.13 µm SiGe BiCMOS technology. In order to keep the Noise Equivalent Temperature Di erence (NETD) of the radiometers below 1 K, low insertion loss SPDT switches, high bandwidth low noise ampli ers (LNA) and high responsivity power detectors have been designed and measured. Dicke Switched and Total Power Radiometer front end receivers have been implemented. For complete integration, on-chip mm-wave antennas that make use of LBE (Local Backside Etching) process are included in the receivers. Also, a single antenna dual channel receiver is proposed and designed that would increase the sensitivity of the radiometer by √2 without increasing the overall die area