Low-power CMOS transceiver circuits for 60GHz band millimeter-wave impulse radio

In this paper we present an 8Gbps CMOS amplitude-shift-keying (ASK) modulator in the transmitter and a 19.2mW 2Gbps CMOS pulse receiver circuits for high-speed and low-power 60GHz millimeter-wave impulse radio. High-speed ASK modulation is obtained without using DC power by turning on and off of the shunt connected short channel NMOSFET switches. The isolation is maximized using quarter-wavelength on-chip transmission lines. The isolation data-rate product of this work is 3.7 times higher than recently reported millimeter-wave ASK modulators. The proposed 60GHz pulse receiver circuit requires low-power for high-speed data since it detects the envelope of the received pulses using a nonlinear detecting amplifier and only limiting amplifier process the high-speed data. This receiver requires the lowest DC power among recently reported millimeter-wave receivers.