Beamforming Transmitter IC at 8-GHz in 130-nm CMOS

In English An 8-GHz beamforming transmitter IC has been designed in a 130-nm CMOS process. Two power amplifiers with independently controllable phase enable the beamforming. The phases are digitally controllable over the full 360◦ range, which is accomplished by binary weighting of quadrature phase signals in the power amplifiers. The quadrature phase signals are generated by a quadrature voltage controlled oscillator followed by a buffer, which serves as an isolation between the power amplifiers and the oscillator. The chip contains seven on-chip differential inductors, and consumes a total of 47 mA from a 1.0 V supply. The measured output power is -3 dBm for each power amplifier.