SiGe BiCMOS building blocks for a K/Ka-band flexible phased array system for SatCom applications

Abstract

This work reports the design of two key building blocks of a K/Ka-band SatCom phased-array transceiver. The circuits are developed by using 130-nm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology. A Ka-band single-ended Power Amplifier (PA) and a K-band single-ended Low-Noise Amplifier (LNA) have been designed. Simulation results have shown that the PA achieves 30.5 dB peak small signal gain, 27.6% peak power added efficiency (PAE), and an OIP3 better than 25 dBm within the entire operating frequency band. The maximum power consumption is 76 mW with a 2 V supply voltage, and it occupies an area of $1234\ \mu\mathrm{m}\times 758\ \mu\mathrm{m}$, pads included. The simulations results of the LNA have shown 32 dB peak power gain, 2 dB minimum noise figure, and −18 dBm IIP3 at 20 GHz. The NF, in the entire frequency band of interest, is less than 2.3 dB. The LNA exhibits a power consumption of 20.7 mW with a supply voltage of 2.4 V and it occupies an area of $1000\ \mu\mathrm{m}\times 800\ \mu\mathrm{m}$, pads included. It is worth noting that, a set of test structures that includes all the HBTs used for PA and LNA development have been designed and measured in order to evaluate both the accuracy of the models provided by the foundry and the impact of the extrinsic elements due to base, collector, and emitter interconnections.