SiGe HBT ICs with high operational to transit frequency ratio: design and design re-use [Elektronische Ressource] / Sébastien Chartier

Informations

• Publié par: universitat_ulm
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 10
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

SiGe HBT ICs with High Operational to
Transit Frequency Ratio:
Design and Design Re-use
DISSERTATION
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines
DOKTOR-INGENIEURS
(DR.-ING.)
der Fakult¨at fu¨r Ingenieurwissenschaften
und Informatik der Universit¨at Ulm
von
S´ebastien Chartier
aus Auchel
Gutachter: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hermann Schumacher
Dr. Christoph Scheytt
Amtierender Dekan: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Weber
30.01.2009Abstract
TherecentsignificantperformanceimprovementofSiGeHeterojunctionBipolarTransis-
tors has opened the way to the millimeter-wave domain. In the future, this will allow
the development of new exciting consumer-oriented applications such as high-data-rate
wireless systems or high resolution automotive radar.
However,withtheaggressivescalingofdevicedimensionsandtheimplementationofnew
advanced features, the cost of Si-based technologies becomes a major issue. The possible
solutionsare,first,touseandcombineefficientdesigntechniquestoreachhigherfrequen-
cies for a given technology with relaxed lateral scaling. A second approach consists in
using a circuit, once the design has been successful, as a foundation for future designs,
thus drastically reducing the required time for a design cycle and its cost.
These two approaches have been investigated in this work. The four main RF blocks
of a typical RF front-end (Low Noise Amplifier, Voltage Controlled Oscillator, Down-
converter Mixer and Frequency Divider) have been successfully designed and achieve
very good results beyond one third of the transistor transit frequency. Furthermore, by
slightly modifying the design topology (mostly the reactive elements), the ICs have been
redesigned to operate at higher frequencies and demonstrate very good performance.
iAcknowledgments
So little space for so many people to thank ...
MyfirstthoughtsgoobviouslytomysupervisorProf.Dr.-IngHermannSchumacherwho,
during the past years, has simply been a wonderful group leader, scientist and person.
Even with his busy schedule, he always found the time to come and discuss, no matter
the topic, and I am most grateful for it.
I want to thank each person of the Competence Center on Integrated Circuits and Com-
munications and of the Institute of Electron Devices and Circuits, especially Ertugrul
S¨onmez for sharing his knowledge on circuit design, Christoph Schick and Ingmar Kall-
fassformakingmyfirstmonthsinUlm(andthefollowingyears)fantastic,JochenDederer
for fruitful discussions, Bernd Schleicher, Gang Liu and Liu Liu, for providing, through
their Master Thesis, a great input to pursue this work, Ferdinand Sigloch for helping me
in all computer related issues, Ursula Spitzberg for great introduction to on-wafer mea-
surements,Dr. AndreasTrasserforgreatscientificadvicesandUrsulaWinterforhelping
me in all administrative tasks.
I want to thank all the industrial partners I had the chance to work with. At Atmel
GmbH in Ulm and Heilbronn, Dr. Wolfgang Schwerzel for great support regarding the
multi project wafer runs, Peter Brandl (now with Infineon) and Dr. Ju¨rgen Berntgen for
sharing their knowledge of the SiGe2RF technology, Holger H¨ohnemann and Winfried
Rabeforgreatcollaborationduringthe KOKON project. AtEADSinUlm,WalterLud-
wig for his trust and advices during our common projects. I also want to thank Oliver
KaufmannfromVoithAGforgreatpartnership. AtIHPGmbH,Dr.GerhardG.Fischer,
Srdjan Glisic, Dr. Rene Scholz, Johannes Borngr¨aber and Falk Kornd¨orfer for great sup-
port during the KOKON project.
Jetiens`aremerciermesparentsEdithetJean-PierreChartierpourleurmerveilleuxsou-
tien et leurs conseils `a chaque´etape de mes´etudes et de ma carri`ere. Je tiens´egalement
`a remercier Dr. Alexandre Kudlinski pour son amiti´e au cours des 20 derni`eres ann´ees et
Dr. Gwenael Gaborit qui m’a conseill´e de venir passer quelques mois `a Ulm ... Mois qui
sont devenus ann´ees.
And last but certainly not least, vorrei ringraziare mia moglie Giada Frascaroli. Senza
il suo supporto di ogni giorno, senza il suo sorriso e il suo entusiasmo, questo dottorato
sarebbe stato impossibile.
iiiv
To my father, Jean-Pierre ChartierContents
1 Introduction 1
2 Super Heterodyne Receiver and Automotive Radar 5
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Super heterodyne receiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3 Short range and long range automotive radar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3 SiGe Heterojunction Bipolar Technologies 9
3.1 Atmel’s SiGe HBT technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2 IHP’s SiGe BiCMOS technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4 Reactive Elements on Lossy Silicon Substrate 13
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2 Thin-film microstrip lines on lossy silicon substrate . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2.1 Potentialtransmissionlinetopologiesforimplementationonalow-
resistivity Si substrate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2.2 Simulation of the TFMSLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.3 Modeling of the TFMSLs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3 Lumped elements on lossy silicon substrate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5 Millimeter Wave Amplifier ICs 23
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.2 Millimeter-wave amplifiers based on lumped elements . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.2.1 Millimeter-wave Low Noise Amplifier topology . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
viiCONTENTS viii
5.2.2 Isolation techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.2.3 Layout and characterization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
5.3 Millimeter-wave amplifiers using TFMSLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.3.1 Millimeter-waveamplifiersbasedonthin-filmmicrostriplinesusing
Atmel’s SiGe HBT Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
5.3.2 77-81 GHz low noise amplifier based on thin-film microstrip lines
using IHP’s SiGe BiCMOS Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.4 Summary of the millimeter-wave amplifiers performance. . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.5 Comparison with previously published amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6 Millimeter Wave Voltage Controlled Oscillators 43
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.2 Theory of oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.2.1 Negative resistance type oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.2.2 Oscillator phase noise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6.3 Description of the topology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
6.4 Characterization of the VCOs with common-base buffer . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.5 VCO with cascode output buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
6.6 Characterization of the VCOs with cascode buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
6.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.8 Comparison with previously published oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7 Fully Balanced Down-Converter Mixer 65
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.2 Fundamentals of mixers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.3 Double balanced mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7.4 Layout and measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
7.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73