Millimetre-Wave Circuits and Systems for 5G Wireless Transceivers

This thesis investigates new methods to improve the performance of specific components in mm-wave 5G transceivers to overcome the challenges aroused with the increased carrier frequency. To start with, this thesis presents a 4-bit switched-filter phase shifter. Different from the previous ones, this design has additional fine-phase tuning capability by employing forward-body biasing, which can be used to introduce insensitivity to the PVT variations and to increase the fractional bandwidth where the rms phase error is lower than 5 degree. In the second chapter, a novel G_m-boosting technique for mm-wave LNA which comprise triple-well bulk CMOS transistors is proposed. When compared to the G_m-boosting techniques in the literature, the presented one does not require additional chip area which makes it favorable for most of the receiver architectures. Furthermore, this technique can be implemented together with the other bandwidth extension techniques for further improving the FoM. In this thesis, another noise cancellation technique for mm-wave LNAs is discussed. This technique is based on a transformer is created by vertically integrating the inductor in the input matching network and the source degeneration inductor of a cascode in the same die section. This implementation both reduces the overall chip area and creates a magnetic feedback between the source and the gate of the common-source transistor of the cascode amplifier, which improves the noise and input matching performance of the LNA. Antenna design is one of the scopes of this thesis. Firstly, an antipodal exponential tapered slot antenna is visited. Then, a triple-port annular slot antenna is presented. The high isolation between the ports enables this antenna to be implemented in 5G mm-wave In-Band-Full-Duplex systems as a monostatic simultaneous-transmit-and-receive antenna or in a 5G phased array system for transmit or receive purpose only. Compared to the other monostatic simultaneous-transmit-and-receive antennas, the presented one is the first one operating at mm-wave frequencies. Finally, a re-configurable miniaturized triple-stub tuner (TST) structure, which can be used for amplitude and phase calibration purposes, is proposed in the thesis. To decrease the chip area, the transmission line based stubs are replaced with specifically designed transistors arrays. Thanks to this proposed method, the presented design is suitable for CMOS implementation unlike the previously published re-configurable TST structures.