Injection Locking

— This paper presents the first phased array transceiver operating from 71 to 86 GHz using injection-locked oscillators (ILOs) for phase shifting. A folded-cascode ILO is proposed to extend the locking range of an array of oscillators. Frequency multiplication covers a 10-GHz tuning range with 23-dB power gain. Each ILO path covers more than ±300° and exhibits low amplitude variation with respect to phase shift range (<1 dB) and excellent isolation and amplitude error (<0.5 dB) between array elements. A wideband, bidirectional RF front end delivers 10-dBm maximum output power with more than 20-dB conversion gain over the 3-dB bandwidth in the transmit (TX) mode and a minimum 9.5-dB noise figure with more than 20-dB conversion gain in the receive (RX) mode. Low phase noise is demonstrated in the ILO approach over the phase tuning range with −112 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset and phase noise variation for different phase shift states under 2.5 dB, corresponding to less than 2° phase error. Array patterns demonstrate the wide scan range, and dynamic measurements show that the transmitter supports up to 6-Gb/s data rate with 256 QAM. The chip has 3.4 × 2.1 mm 2 area implementing in the 90-nm BiCMOS technology and consuming 386.4 mW in the TX mode and 286 mW in the RX mode per element. Index Terms— Bidirectional transceivers, injection-locked oscillator (ILO) phase shifter, millimeter-wave, multiplier, 90-nm SiGe BiCMOS, scalable phased array, wideband.

This paper proposes the use of N-push operation for combining the functions of the VCO and divider in the mm-wave frequency range. If employed in a PLL, the combined VCO/divider (C-VCO/D) would potentially provide wider tuning range than traditional mm-wave PLLs employing injection locked frequency dividers, thus exploiting the full range available in the 60 GHz band (57 GHz-64 GHz).

This paper presents a 60GHz direct-conversion transceiver using 60GHz quadrature oscillators. The 65nm CMOS transceiver realizes the IEEE802.15.3c full-rate wireless communication for every 16QAM/8PSK/QPSK/BPSK mode. The maximum data rates with an antenna built in the package are 8Gb/s in QPSK mode and 11 Gb/s in 16QAM mode within a BER of <;1CH, and the transmitter and the receiver consume 186mW and 106mW, respectively.

A new approach to analyze injection locking mode of oscillators under small external excitation is proposed. The proposed approach exploits existence conditions of the solution of HB linear system with degenerate matrix. The method allows one to obtain the locking range for an arbitrary oscillator circuit with an arbitrary periodic injection waveform. The approach can be easily implemented into a circuit simulator. Examples are given to confirm the correctness of the new approach.

This paper presents a 12.5+12.5Gb/s full-duplex plastic waveguide interconnect solution based on millimeter-wave signal transmission. The plastic waveguide is simply a long solid piece of plastic that provides a very simple, versatile, flexible, and low-cost transmission medium that has the main advantages of optical fiber in isolation and bandwidth, without the need for costly EO and OE. The dielectric waveguide does not need to be connected electrically like the wire or aligned to micron-level accuracy like optical fibers. It can be bent and twisted without significant impact on the signal. Compared to the wireless link discussed earlier, it offers additional signal isolation and confinement. Thus, it can be extended over much longer distances due to the low attenuation in the waveguide (as opposed to free space) and multiple independent lines can be run in parallel to increase the bandwidth. In our proposed plastic waveguide link, the TXs and RXs are fully integrated in CMOS, and the waveguide couplers can be fabricated in a conventional resin package without additional cost. In our existing setting there are a transmitter and a receiver operating at different carrier frequencies on each side of the waveguide, making it possible to realize a full-duplex solution. Because of the smaller fractional bandwidth for the millimeter-wave transmission, no equalization circuit is required.

This paper presents a 60-GHz direct-conversion transceiver using 60-GHz quadrature oscillators. The transceiver has been fabricated in a standard 65-nm CMOS process. It in cludes a receiver with a 17.3-dB conversion gain and less than 8.0-dB noise figure, a transmitter with a 18.3-dB conversion gain, a 9.5-dBm output 1 dB compression point, a 10.9-dBm saturation output power and 8.8-% power added efficiency. The 60-GHz frequency synthesizer is implemented by a combination of a 20-GHz PLL and a 60-GHz quadrature injection-locked oscillator, which achieves a phase noise of -95 dBc/Hz@l MHz-offset at 60 GHz. The transceiver realizes IEEE802.15.3c full-rate wireless communication for all 16QAM/8PSK/QPSK/BPSK modes, and the communication distances with the full data rate using 2.16-GHz bandwidth, measured with an antenna built in the package, are 2.7-m (BPSK/QPSK) and 0.2-m (8PSK/16QAM). The measured maximum data rates are 8 Gb/s in QPSK mode and 11 Gb/s in 16QAM mode over a 5 cm wireless link within a bit error rate (BER) of <;10-3. The transceiver consumes 186 mW from a 1.2-V supply voltage while transmitting and 106 mW from 1.0-V supply voltage while receiving. Both transmitter and receiver are driven by a 20-GHz PLL, which consumes 66 mW, including output buffer, from a 1.2-V supply voltage.

A 0.622-8 Gb/s CDR circuit using injection locking for jitter suppression and phase interpolation in high bandwidth SOC solutions is described. A slave injection locked oscillator (SILO) is locked to a tracking aperture-multiplying DLL (TA-MDLL) via a coarse phase selection MUX. For the fine timing vernier, an interpolator DAC controls the injection strength of the MUX output into the SILO. This 1.2 V 0.13 μm CMOS CDR consumes 33 mW at 8 Gb/s. Die area, including voltage regulator, is 0.08 mm2. Recovered clock jitter is 6.9 ps rms/49.3 ps peak-to-peak at a 200 ppm bitrate offset.

This paper proposes the use of N-push operation for combining the functions of the VCO and dividers in the mm-wave frequency range. If employed in a PLL, the combined VCO/divider (C-VCO/D) would potentially provide wider tuning range than traditional mm-wave PLLs employing injection locked frequency dividers, thus exploiting the full range available in the 60 GHz band (57 GHz-64 GHz).

We report on intensity noise measurements of single-frequency Nd:YVO4 microchip lasers optically pumped with amplitude squeezed light from an injection-locked diode laser. Calibrated homodyne measurements show a minimum intensity noise of 10.1 dB above the SQL at a frequency of 100 kHz. The measured intensity noise spectra are described with high accuracy by a theoretical model based on the quantum mechanical Langevin rate equations, including classical and quantum noise sources.

Radio-frequency (RF) oscillators are key components in many radio and also radio-over-fiber (RoF) systems. Here, we propose a novel technique to extent the tunable range of the radio frequency generated by optoelectronic oscillators. The proposed optoelectronic oscillator includes an intensity modulator, a photodetector, an optical circulator, a Febry-Perot laser diode, and a broad band RF amplifier. All those devices compose