Towards 100 Gbps: A Fully Electronic 90 Gbps One Meter Wireless Link at 230 GHz

Abstract

In this paper we present a fully-electronic, high spectral efficiency one meter wireless link working at a maximum speed of 90 Gbps. It is based on a RF Tx and Rx front-end chipset working at a tunable carrier of 220–260 GHz. The chipset was manufactured in a SiGe 0.13um HBT technology with ft/fmax=350/550 GHz. The Tx delivers a maximum output power of 8.5 dBm and its dc power consumption is 960 m W. The receiver peak conversion gain is 21 dB and its minimum single side band noise figure is 9.5 dB with a power consumption of 1 W. The 6-dB bandwidth measured between the Tx baseband input and the Rx baseband output is 15 GHz. To increase the speed of our previous work of 65 Gbps based on a QPSK modulation scheme, an increase in the spectral efficiency of the link is needed. Applying a back off in the Tx of 4 dB, a link based on a 16-QAM modulation scheme with an spectral efficiency of 2 bits per hertz was achieved. For data-rates of 80 Gbps and below, the EVM achieved was under 11.2%, while for 90 Gbps the measured EVM was 15%.