Currently, commercial radar systems are mainly found in the E-band. However, higher frequencies offer significant advantages in terms of absolute bandwidth and system design. The use of on-chip antennas and FR4 PCB materials is enabled by frequencies above ≈100 GHz. This work presents two wideband and fully integrated signal sources for radar applications at 90 and 180 GHz. By using the novel 90nm SiGe BiCMOS B12HFC technology, the signal sources provide up to 6.43dBm and 3.8dBm output power and dc-to-RF efficiencies of 4.59% and 0.98%, respectively. Furthermore, the two signal sources achieve a tuning range of 24.1 GHz (26.6%) and 51.7 GHz (28.8%). The 90 GHz signal source is based on a fundamental voltage-controlled oscillator and a static by-16 frequency divider, which operates up to 120 GHz. The divided LO signal allows the use of commercial PLL components to enable different modulation schemes. The 180 GHz signal source uses the same building blocks but is extended by a power amplifier and a bootstrapped Gilbert-Cell based frequency doubler, which has a differential output.

Radar systems are gaining in popularity and spreading into more and more applications due to their robust measurement method. While single-chip solutions have been published in the last decade in the upper millimetre-wave range, solutions are still very limited in the lower THz range. In this paper, a 0.48THz FMCW-radar transceiver MMIC in a 130nm silicon-germanium (SiGe) technology is presented. The MMIC consists of one Tx and Rx channel, respectively. The components for frequency synthesis and on-chip patch antennas are fully integrated into the MMIC. The achievable tuning range of the MMIC is 0.448 − 0.491 THz with a peak on-chip output power of about -9.4 dBm. The MMIC was designed and manufactured with the IHP SG13G3 technology.

This work presents a Colpitts quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator with a center frequency of 67 GHz and a bandwidth of 3.9 GHz. The realized circuit provides up to 13.1 dBm output power per channel and has a power consumption of 410mW, resulting in a dc-to-RF efficiency of 9.9 %. The phase noise of the oscillator at 1 MHz offset is as low as -105.2 dBc/Hz. The measured phase error between the in-phase and the quadrature-phase output is ≤ 11.8°. This work demonstrates a robust coupling mechanism for large bandwidth QVCOs with unambiguous phase positions.