A 4-Channel V-Band Beamformer Featuring a Switchless PALNA for Scalable Phased Array Systems

This paper presents a 4-channel bidirectional V-band beamformer adopting a switchless PALNA in a SiGe:C 130 nm BiCMOS technology, featuring ft/f max of 250/340 GHz. Using such technique saves the silicon area occupied by the RF switches avoiding their lossy effect on PAs outputs and LNAs inputs. The designed beamformer contains PAs, LNAs, vector modulators with active balun, passive power dividers/combiners and an integrated SPI interface. On-wafer measurements show that the fabricated beamformer covers the band from 57 GHz to 66 GHz with an average small signal gain of 18 dB and 9 dB all over the channels in both Tx and Rx modes respectively. Furthermore, the beamformer achieves an OP1dB of 10.5 dBm in Tx mode and an IP1dB of −27 dBm in Rx mode. The circuit occupies 11 mm2 and consumes 230 mW and 100 mW per channel in Tx and Rx modes respectively.