A D-Band 48-Gbit/s 64-QAM/QPSK Direct-Conversion I/Q Transceiver Chipset

This paper presents design and characterization of single-chip 110-170-GHz (D-band) direct conversion in-phase/quadrature-phase (I/Q) transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), realized in a 250-nm indium phosphide (InP) double heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) technology. The chipset is suitable for low-power ultrahigh-speed wireless communication and can be used in both homodyne and heterodyne architectures. The TX consists of an I/Q modulator, a frequency tripler, and a broadband three-stage power amplifier. It has single sideband (SSB) conversion gain of 25 dB and saturated output power of 9 dBm. The RX includes an I/Q demodulator with D-band amplifier and × 3 multiplier chain at the LO port. The RX provides a conversion gain of 26 dB and has noise figure of 9 dB. A 48-Gbit/s direct quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) data transmission using a 144-GHz millimeter-wave carrier signal is demonstrated with a bit error rate (BER) of 2.3 × 10^-3 and energy efficiency of 7.44 pJ/bit. An 18-Gbit/s 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signal was transmitted in heterodyne mode with measured TX-to-RX error vector magnitude (EVM) of less than 6.8% and spectrum efficiency of 3.6 bit/s/Hz. The TX and RX have dc power consumption of 165 and 192 mW, respectively. The chip area of each TX and RX circuit is 1.3 × 0.9 mm².