In this thesis, the circuits which comprise the front-end of a millimeter-wave transmit-receive module are investigated using a state-of-the-art 90 nm SiGe BiCMOS process for use in radar remote sensing applications. In Chapter I, the motivation for a millimeter-wave radar in the context of space-based remote sensing is discussed. In addition, an overview of Silicon-germanium technology is presented, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of design challenges at millimeter-wave frequencies. In Chapter II, a brief history of radar technology is presented - the motivations leading to the development of the transmit-receive module for active electronically scanned arrays are discussed, and the critical components which reside in nearly every high-frequency transmit-receive module are introduced. In Chapter III, the design and results of a W-band single-pole, double-throw switch using SiGe p-i-n diodes are discussed. In particular, the design topology and methods used to achieve low-loss and high power handling over a wide matching bandwidth without sacrificing isolation are described. In Chapter IV, the design and results of a W-band low-noise amplifier using SiGe HBT's are discussed. The design methodologies used to achieve high gain and exceptional noise performance over a wide matching bandwidth are described. Concluding remarks and a discussion of future work are in Chapter V.

This thesis describes fundamental approaches to quantify rate versus power consumption tradeoffs for cascaded communication systems. The discussion is bolstered by a large number of in-situ channel measurements, which are used in discussions of the power consumption of future massively broadband cellular systems. Chapter one provides an introduction. Chapter two discusses power consumption trends in modern communication systems. Chapter three introduces the consumption factor framework. Chapter four discusses the channel measurement campaign. Chapter five concludes the thesis, and uses the measurement results to estimate power consumption and capacity of future cellular systems. In addition, chapter five extends the consumption factor theory and draws fundamental conclusions about the energy price per bit for a general cascaded communication system. / text

In the last decade, microwave and millimeter-wave systems have gained importance in civil and security applications. Due to an increasing maturity and availability of circuits and components, these systems are getting more compact while being less expensive. Furthermore, quantitative imaging has been conducted at lower frequencies using computational intensive inverse problem algorithms. Due to the ill-posed character of the inverse problem, these algorithms are, in general, very sensitive to noise: the key to their successful application to experimental data is the precision of the measurement system. Only a few research teams investigate systems for imaging in the W-band. In this manuscript such a system is presented, designed to provide scattered field data to quantitative reconstruction algorithms. This manuscript is divided into six chapters. Chapter 2 describes the theory to compute numerically the scattered fields of known objects. In Chapter 3, the W-band measurement setup in the anechoic chamber is shown. Preliminary measurement results are analyzed. Relying on the measurement results, the error sources are studied and corrected by post-processing. The final results are used for the qualitative reconstruction of all three targets of interest and to image quantitatively the small cylinder. The reconstructed images are compared in detail in Chapter 4. Close range imaging has been investigated using a vector analyzer and a radar system. This is described in Chapter 5, based on a future application, which is the detection of FOD on airport runways. The conclusion is addressed in Chapter 6 and some future investigations are discussed.

The objective of the research in this dissertation is to demonstrate the viability of using silicon-germanium (SiGe) bipolar/complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) technologies in novel high-speed, high-performance wireless and wireline applications. These applications include self-healing integrated systems, W-Band phased array radar systems, and multi-gigabit wireline transceiver systems. The contributions from this research are summarized below: 1. Design of a wideband 8-18 GHz signal source with the best reported tuning range and die area combination for self-healing applications [95]. 2. Design of a robust, multi-band 8-10/ 16-20 GHz signal source with amplitude-locking for self-healing applications. A figure-of-merit (FoM) is proposed that combines tuning range and die area, and this work achieves the best FoM compared with state-of-the art [51]. 3. First ever reported on-die healing of image-rejection ratio of an 8-18 GHz mixer integrated with the multi-band test signal source [52], [96]. 4. Design of a 94 GHz differential Colpitts oscillator with 14% tuning range that spans 86-99 GHz for phased-array radar systems. 5. Identification of technology platform related bottlenecks in multi-gigabit wireline systems. A novel study of linearity of switching transistors in a current-mode logic (CML) gate. 6. A novel FoM that can be used to predict large-signal CML delay using small-signal Y-parameter techniques [97].

In this thesis, based on the indoor channel measurements and ray-tracing modeling for the indoor mm-wave wireless communications, the challenges of the design of the radio in this band is studied. Considering the recently developed standards such as IEEE 802.15.3c, ECMA and WiGig at 60 GHz, the link budget of the system design for different classes of operation is done and the requirement for the antenna and other RF sections are extracted. Based on radiation characteristics of mm-wave and the fundamental limits of low-cost Silicon technology, it is shown that phased-array is the ultimate solution for the radio and physical layer of the mobile millimeter wave multi-Gb/s wireless networks. Different phased-array configurations are studied and a low-cost single-receiver array architecture with RF phase-shifting is proposed. A systematic approach to the analysis of the overall noise-figure of the proposed architecture is presented and the component technical requirements are derived for the system level specifications. The proposed on-chip antennas and antenna-in-packages for various applications are designed and verified by the measurement results. The design of patch antennas on the low-cost RT/Duroid substrate and the slot antennas on the IPD technologies as well as the compact on-chip slot DRA antenna are explained in the antenna design section. The design of reflective-type phase shifters in CMOS and MEMS technologies is explained. Finally, the design details of two developed 60 GHz integrated phased-arrays in CMOS technology are discussed. Front-end circuit blocks such as LNA, continuous passive reflective-type phase shifters, power combiner and variable gain amplifiers are investigated, designed and developed for a 60 GHz phased-array radio in CMOS technology. In the first design, the two-element CMOS phased-array front-ends based on passive phase shifting architecture is proposed and developed. In the second phased-array, the recently developed on-chip dielectric resonator antenna in our group in lower frequency is scaled and integrated with the front-end.

With the growing trend of wireless electronics, frequency spectrum is crowded with different applications. High data transfer rate solutions that operate in license-exempt frequency spectrum range are sought. The most promising candidate is the 60 GHz multi-giga bit transfer rate millimeter wave circuit. In order to provide a cost-effective solution, circuits designed in CMOS are implemented in a single SOC. In this work, a modeling technique created in Cadence shows an error of less than 3dB in magnitude and 5 degree in phase for a single transistor. Additionally, less than 3dB error of power performance for the PA is also verified. At the same time, layout strategies required for millimeter wave front-end circuits are investigated. All of these combined techniques help the design converge to one simulation platform for system level simulation. Another aspect enabling the design as a single SOC lies in integration. In order to integrate digital and analog circuits together, necessary peripheral circuits must be designed. An on-chip voltage regulator, which steps down the analog power supply voltage and is compatible with digital circuits, has been designed and has demonstrated an efficiency of 65 percent with the specific area constraint. The overall output voltage ripple generated is about 2 percent. With the necessary power supply voltage, gate voltage bias circuit designs have been illustrated. They provide feasible solutions in terms of area and power consumption. Temperature and power supply sensitivities are minimized in first two designs. Process variation is further compensated in the third design. The third design demonstrates a powerful solution that each aspect of variations is well within 10%. As the DC conditions are achieved on-chip for both the digital and analog circuits, digital and analog circuits must be connected together with a DAC. A high speed DAC is designed with special layout techniques. It is verified that the DAC can operate at a speed higher than 3 Gbps from the pulse-shaping FIR filter measurement result. With all of these integrated elements and modeling techniques, a high data transfer rate CMOS RF SOC operating at 60 GHz is possible.

abstract: The inductance of a conductor expresses its tendency to oppose a change in current flowing through it. For superconductors, in addition to the familiar magnetic inductance due to energy stored in the magnetic field generated by this current, kinetic inductance due to inertia of charge carriers is a significant and often dominant contribution to total inductance. Devices based on modifying the kinetic inductance of thin film superconductors have widespread application to millimeter-wave astronomy. Lithographically patterning such a film into a high quality factor resonator produces a high sensitivity photodetector known as a kinetic inductance detector (KID), which is sensitive to frequencies above the superconducting energy gap of the chosen material. Inherently multiplexable in the frequency domain and relatively simple to fabricate, KIDs pave the way to the large format focal plane array instruments necessary to conduct the next generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB), star formation, and galaxy evolution studies. In addition, non-linear kinetic inductance can be exploited to develop traveling wave kinetic inductance parametric amplifiers (TKIPs) based on superconducting delay lines to read out these instruments. I present my contributions to both large and small scale collaborative efforts to develop KID arrays, spectrometers integrated with KIDs, and TKIPs. I optimize a dual polarization TiN KID absorber for the next generation Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry, which is designed to investigate the role magnetic fields play in star formation. As part of an effort to demonstrate aluminum KIDs on sky for CMB polarimetry, I fabricate devices for three design variants. SuperSpec and WSpec are respectively the on-chip and waveguide implementations of a filter bank spectrometer concept designed for survey spectroscopy of high redshift galaxies. I provide a robust tool for characterizing the performance of all SuperSpec devices and demonstrate basic functionality of the first WSpec prototype. As part of an effort to develop the first W-Band (75-110 GHz) TKIP, I construct a cryogenic waveguide feedthrough, which enhances the Astronomical Instrumentation Laboratory’s capability to test W-Band devices in general. These efforts contribute to the continued maturation of these kinetic inductance technologies, which will usher in a new era of millimeter-wave astronomy. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Astrophysics and Astronomy 2018

In this paper, a new millimeter wave 3D imaging radar is proposed. The user just needs to move the radar along a circular track, and high resolution 3D imaging can be generated. The proposed radar uses the movement of itself to synthesize a large aperture in both the azimuth and elevation directions. It can utilize inverse Radon transform to resolve 3D imaging. To improve the sensing result, the compressed sensing approach is further investigated. The simulation and experimental result further illustrated the design. Because a single transceiver circuit is needed, a light, affordable and high resolution 3D mmWave imaging radar is illustrated in the paper.

Les futures applications sans fil anticipent une explosion de la pléthore de cas d'utilisation et de services, qui ne peut être soutenue par des améliorations incrémentielles des schémas de communication existants. Pour cela, deux axes de recherche sont particulièrement intéressants: la densification du réseau à l'aide de petites cellules et la communication par ondes millimétriques (ondes millimétriques). Dans cette thèse, nous modélisons et évaluons des réseaux cellulaires constitués de petites cellules à ondes millimétriques utilisant la technique d'accès multi-radio (RAT) déployées au-dessus de la macro-architecture existante. Premièrement, nous modélisons mathématiquement un déploiement homogène de petites cellules multi-RAT et caractérisons les performances de l'utilisateur et du réseau en termes de probabilité de couverture signal sur brouillage plus rapport de bruit (SINR), de débit descendant et de probabilité de surcharge de cellule. Ensuite, nous étudions l'association des utilisateurs à différents niveaux et la sélection optimale de différents RAT, de manière à optimiser ces mesures de performance. En règle générale, les modèles de réseau cellulaire qui supposent des déploiements homogènes de petites cellules ne tiennent pas compte des nuances des caractéristiques de blocage urbain. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous modélisons les emplacements de petites cellules le long des routes d'une ville, puis nous prenons en compte les blocages de signaux dus à la construction d'immeubles ou au déplacement de véhicules sur les routes. Sur ce réseau, nous supposons que l’opérateur prend en charge trois types de services v.i.z., les communications ultra-fiables à faible temps de latence (URLLC), les communications massives de type machine (mMTC) et le haut débit mobile amélioré (eMBB) avec des besoins différents. En conséquence, nous étudions la sélection optimale de RAT pour ces services avec divers blocages de véhicules. Enfin, sur la base du modèle de déploiement sur route de petites cellules à ondes millimétriques, nous étudions un réseau conçu pour prendre en charge simultanément des services de positionnement et de données. Nous caractérisons la précision du positionnement en fonction des limites de la localisation, puis étudions des stratégies optimales de partitionnement des ressources et de sélection de la largeur de faisceau afin de répondre à diverses exigences de positionnement et de débit de données. / Future wireless applications anticipate an explosion in the plethora of use-cases and services, which cannot be sustained by incremental improvements on the existing communication schemes. For this, two research directions are particularly attractive: network densification using small cells and millimeter wave (mm-wave) wave communications. In this thesis, we model and evaluate cellular networks consisting of multi-radio access technique (RAT) mm-wave small cells deployed on top of the legacy macro-architecture. First, we mathematically model a homogeneous deployment of multi-RAT small cells and characterize the user and network performance in terms of signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) coverage probability, downlink throughput, and the cell overloading probability. Then, we study users association to different tiers and optimal selection of different RATs, so as to optimize these performance metrics. Generally, cellular network models that assume homogeneous deployments of small cells fail to take into account the nuances of urban blockage characteristics. To address this, we model the small cell locations along the roads of a city, and subsequently, we take into consideration the signal blockages due to buildings or moving vehicles on the roads. In this network, we assume that the operator supports three types of services v.i.z., ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), massive machine-type communications (mMTC), and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) with different requirements. Consequently, we study the optimal RAT selection for these services with varying vehicular blockages. Finally, based on the on-road deployment model of mm-wave small cells, we study a network designed to support positioning and data services simultaneously. We characterize the positioning accuracy based on the localization bounds and then study optimal resource partitioning and beamwidth selection strategies to address varied positioning and data-rate requirements.

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