Multiple Tanks Technique: Application to silicon-based radio-frequency and millimeter-wave integrated circuits

Abstract

Radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits (ICs) and millimeter-wave (mm-wave) ICs play crucial roles in modern wireless communication systems in laptops, smart phones, tablets, and so on. Silicon-based processes that have low cost and high integrity prompt the wide adoption of RF/mm-wave ICs in consumer electronics. However, the high substrate and metal losses of commercial silicon are considered inherent drawbacks, especially for RFIC designs with low-resistivity silicon of ∼10 Ω/square. We propose a multiple tanks topology to overcome this issue. The topology utilizes coupled multiple coils as a transformer to improve the equivalent quality factor (Q factor) of the tanks. Different applications if ICs, such as voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), dividers, power amplifiers (PAs), switches, and other circuits with frequencies up to 300 GHz, verify that by using this technique, dedicated RF/mm-wave IC performance can be significantly improved. Moreover, a 60-GHz transceiver system-on-chip (SOC) based on this technique is verified. This article presents the proposed method and implementation, from the fundamental concept and analysis to IC and system verification.