IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2015 - 35

to investigate futuristic systems for 10+ gigabit short-range wireless as well as wideband
sensing/imaging applications. Simply put,
the shorter wavelength associated with the
mm-wave/THz band is appealing since the
physical dimensions of the antenna and associated electronics are reduced in size,
making it possible to design multi-antenna structures to achieve
beamforming, spatial diversity, and BREAKOFF decade. THz (including the W-band) waves pass through nonconducting materials
such as clothes, paper, wood, and brick, and so cameras sensitive
to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms, and "frisk"
people at distance. THz/mm-wave imaging and sensing systems,
therefore, will be key enabling components in applications such as
security surveillance (to find concealed weapons and explosives),
non-destructive testing, biology, radio astronomy, multigigabit
wireless connectivity, and medical imaging. One of the most critical and daunting tasks in a THz/mm-wave system is signal generation and frequency synthesis. This invited talk presents an overview
and comparative study of recent research efforts that have explored
several circuit techniques and architectures leading to highly efficient frequency synthesis, signal generation, and mm-wave LO
distribution networks in silicon.
"Millimeter-Wave Imaging and Sensing in Silicon"
Abstract
The millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency range from 30 to 300 GHz
has been an active area of research in the field of active and passive
imaging and sensing for several decades. Some of the applications
include concealed weapon detection, airplane navigation in lowvisibility conditions, medical imaging, and multiplexing. Owing to
aggressive scaling in feature size and device fT/ fmax, nanoscale (bi)
CMOS technology potentially enables the integration of sophisticated
systems at the THz frequency range, once only implemented in compound III-IV semiconductor technologies.
This talk will give a brief overview of recent advances in designing
silicon-based ICs capable of operating close to the maximum operation limits of silicon-based transistors. The talk then will discuss two
case studies designed in UCI's Nanoscale Communication Integrated
Circuits Labs, namely, the world's highest fundamental frequency fully
differential transceiver in CMOS at 210 GHz, and the world's highest
frequency PLL-based synthesizer in silicon at 300 GHz with a wide
tuning range.
"Terahertz and Millimeter-Wave Frequency Generation and Synthesis
in Silicon"
Abstract
Terahertz (THz) and millimeter-wave (mm-wave) imaging and sensing is
considered to be one of the emerging and disruptive technologies over
the next and satellite surveillance. At mm-wave frequencies, black body
radiation is emitted at a nearly constant power spectral density (i.e.,
white spectrum), which is directly proportional to the temperature and

emissivity of the radiating object. In recent years, nanoscale silicon technologies have achieved the required imaging system performance that
had previously only been obtained using III-V technologies in a multichip module-based system. This talk will provide an overview of latest
advances in silicon-based imaging integrated circuit design. It will then
focus on three fully integrated imaging receivers in silicon technologies
that have been designed, developed, and measured in Nanoscale Communication Integrated Circuits Labs at the University of California. Most
notably, a new concept of spatially overlapping super-pixels will be
introduced, and a nine-element fully integrated imaging array receiver
with on-chip antennas based on this concept are described.
John Long
"Future Directions for Silicon Radio Frequency Electronics"
Abstract
Growth in mobile communication and computing technologies over the past two decades has
been driven by innovations in system architectures, software technology, and silicon integration. Analog/radio frequency circuit innovations
relevant to developing more efficient infrastructure, conserving energy, and delivering better health care are described
in this talk.
Advanced CMOS is the enabling technology for radio frequency circuits designed into almost all low-cost electronic products sold today.
However, continued scaling presents the designer with different transistor behavior with each generation, as the transistor's electrical characteristics are affected by evolutionary changes in fabrication. Circuit
and systems designers must therefore develop scalable designs that can
adapt to a dynamic technology platform. These challenges are summarized in the first part of the presentation.
Examples from recent research into the design of adaptive, wide-band,
and scalable high-frequency electronics aimed at emerging applications
are described in the second part of the talk. Wireless silicon sensors capable of measuring position and velocity accurately are needed for intelligent traffic management schemes. A recently developed mm-wave
FMCW radar transmitter IC incorporates the phase-locked loop, digitally
controlled oscillator, PA, and calibration circuits in 65-nm CMOS is presented. The ADPLL performs autonomous calibration and closed-loop
DCO gain linearization to output a gigahertz-speed triangular chirp with
high sweep linearity, ultra-low reference spur levels (-74 dBc), and is
scalable to future technology nodes. Scenarios for improving health care
often require low-power radios to monitor patients remotely. In the second example, a low-power, autonomous FM ultrawideband transceiver
and power management unit that transfers data reliably at 100 kb/s and
includes full on-chip digital calibration of the transceiver. Finally, fiberoptic technologies in the Internet backbone are migrating toward coherent modulation schemes to increase data throughput. A silicon electronic
driver capable of producing the 6-V p-p output required to drive a MachZehnder optical modulator is described. Based on a distributed amplifier
architecture, the novel input interface enables performance competitive
with III-V semiconductor technologies (i.e., 15-ps rise-fall times at 10
Gb/s) but on a silicon IC platform capable of full transceiver integration.

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

W i n t e r 2 0 15

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2015