Performance Evaluation of a 220–260 GHz LO Tunable BPSK/QPSK Wireless Link in SiGe HBT Technology

Abstract

This paper reports on characterization and performance evaluation of a 1-m 220–260 GHz tunable carrier wireless link with highly-integrated direct-conversion quadrature TX/RX modules implemented in 0.13μm SiGe HBT technology with ft/fmax of 350/550 GHz. Under limited IF bandwidth constraints of 15 GHz, the maximum achieved data rates for BPSK/QPSK modulation schemes are 35 Gbps with an EVM of 28.9 % and 65 Gbps with an EVM of 31.5 %, respectively. It is further found that the current link performance is not limited by the AWGN-related SNR but mainly affected by the RF front-end imperfections related to large operation bandwidth.