Cryogenic W-Band SiGe BiCMOS low-noise amplifier

In this paper we present the design, modeling, and on-wafer measurement results of an ultra- wideband cryogenically cooled SiGe low-noise amplifier covering at least 71 to 116 GHz. When cryogenically cooled to 20 K and measured on wafer the SiGe amplifier shows 95-116-K noise temperature from 77 to 116 GHz. This means 6 to 7 times improvement in noise temperature compared to room temperature noise. The measured gain is around 20 dB for frequency range of 71 to 116 GHz with unprecedented low power consumption of 2.8 mW. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the highest frequency cryogenic SiGe low-noise amplifier and lowest noise performance for silicon amplifiers for W-band reported to date

Powerline Communication System-on-Chip in 180 nm Harsh Environment SOI Technology

Broadband powerline communication systems using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) can utilize existing power lines to transmit data packets alongside power distribution. Recent standards focus towards high speed multi-media in-house streaming. With improvements towards robustness and throughput new standards increase the speed and reliability of in-house powerline systems. A very different approach is the use of powerline communication systems in a deep drilling environment where temperatures of more than 150°C and pressure levels up to 30 000 psi are present. Typical applications in this environment usually do not require more than several kbit/ys per node and are more reliant on a stable and continuous connection. Here, a powerline communication system can reduce the amount of wiring needed and increase communication robustness significantly. This work provides a harsh environment suitable, reliable and standard compliant communication ASIC that is manufactured in XFAB 180 nm Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) technology allowing operating temperatures of up to 175°C. The die size is 5.25 mm x 5.25 mm and contains a complete Homeplug 1.0 communication stack with an environment for boot, interfacing and debugging. The data rate is as high as 6.1 Mbit/s using the fastest transmission mode and reaches the theoretical maximum of 0.55 Mbit/s in the robust OFDM (ROBO) mode which is of particular interest for harsh environment applications. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first OFDM-based powerline communication ASIC which is particularly designed for harsh environment.© 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works

Optimization of Si MOS transistors for THz detection using TCAD simulation

We present a TCAD simulation study for Silicon MOSFET terahertz detectors. The impact of transistor doping profile optimization on detector performance is analyzed. Time- domain simulations are used to extract the DC response to THz excitations and to explore the impact of different device parasitics. It is shown that the DC response can be improved by (1) minimizing the source-side parasitic resistance (2) maximizing the drain-side parasitic resistance and (3) minimizing the drain-to-body and channel-to-body capacitances.by Ritesh Jain, Holger Rucker and Nihar R. Mohapatr

Si/SiGe:C and InP/GaAsSb heterojunction bipolar transistors for THz applications

This paper presents Si/SiGe:C and InP/GaAsSb HBTs which feature specific assets to address submillimeter-wave and THz applications. Process and modeling status and challenges are reviewed. The specific topics of thermal and substrate effects, reliability, and HF measurements are also discussed

SiGe HBTs and BiCMOS Technology for Present and Future Millimeter-Wave Systems

International audienceThis paper gives an overall picture from BiCMOS technologies up to THz systems integration, which were developed in the European Research project TARANTO. The European high performance BiCMOS technology platforms are presented, which have special advantages for addressing applications in the submillimeter-wave and THz range. The status of the technology process is reviewed and the integration challenges are examined. A detailed discussion on millimeter-wave characterization and modeling is given with emphasis on harmonic distortion analysis, power and noise figure measurements up to 190 GHz and 325 GHz respectively and S-parameter measurements up to 500 GHz. The results of electrical compact models of active (HBTs) and passive components are presented together with benchmark circuit blocks for model verification. BiCMOS-enabled systems and applications with focus on future wireless communication systems and high-speed optical transmission systems up to resulting net data rates of 1.55 Tbit/s are presented