A 120 GHz SiGe BiCMOS Monostatic Transceiver for Radar Applications

This paper focuses on the design and measurement results of a 120 GHz monostatic transceiver system for FMCW radar applications. The fully integrated chip is fabricated using 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology with fT/fmax of 250/340 GHz and occupies only an area of 1.33×0.73mm2, With a current consumption of 270 mA from a 3.3 V single supply, this fully differential transceiver is composed of an I/Q receiver, which has 11.8 dB of conversion gain and −16.6 dBm of input referred P1dB, and a transmitter with 2.6 dBm saturated output power having a 4-bit push-push type VCO integrated to a divide-by-32 block. Furthermore, TX and RX channels are isolated with a very compact front coupler so that the monostatic operation is possible with a single antenna input. As a built-in-self-test block, the transmitted power on transmitter chain is monitored through a two stage power detector by a branch-line-coupler. With the help of a small sized 3×3 cm2 HDPE lens and a compact antenna, the proposed fully integrated monostatic transceiver could detect obstacles above 100 m and proves its suitability for ISM band 120 GHz FMCW radar applications.