A Millimeter-Wave CMOS Transceiver with Digitally Pre-Distorted PAM-4 Modulation for Contactless Communications

Yanghyo Kim, Boyu Hu, Yuan Du, Wei Han Cho, Rulin Huang, Adrian Tang, Huan Neng Chen, Chewnpu Jou, Jason Cong, Tatsuo Itoh, Mau Chung Frank Chang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper presents a millimeter-wave (127 GHz) CMOS transceiver with a digital pre-distortion capable PAM-4 modulator for contactless communications. The transmitter upconverts PAM-4 modulated baseband signals through a free-running 127-GHz oscillator and single-balanced mixer, and it delivers PAM-4 modulated carrier signals to a folded-dipole antenna, which is designed on a FR408HR substrate. The receiver's low-noise amplifier provides a 10-dB gain, and the self-mixer downconverts carrier-modulated PAM-4 signals to baseband signals without the necessity of carrier synchronization. The PAM-4 modulator pre-distorts the baseband signals and corrects the non-linear characteristics of the transmitter's upconversion mixer and the receiver's downconversion self-mixer. Designed and fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process, the demonstrated system transfers 20 Gb/s of PAM-4 modulated data through a 1-mm air gap and consumes 79.5 mW (transmitter: 50.8 mW and receiver: 28.7 mW) of power under a 1.2-V supply, achieving a 3.98-pJ/bit energy efficiency. The communication distance is extended to 3 cm by inserting a dielectric waveguide between the same transceiver.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8643728
Pages (from-to)1600-1612
Number of pages13
JournalIEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
Volume54
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2019

Keywords

  • Contactless communication
  • PAM-4
  • dielectric waveguide
  • digital pre-distortion (DPD)
  • impulse response
  • millimeter-wave transceiver
  • non-linearity

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