A Ka -Band SA TCOM Transceiver in 65-nm CMOS With High-Linearity TX and Dual-Channel Wide-Dynamic-Range RX for

Abstract

In this article, a Ka -band satellite communica- tion (SATCOM) transceiver is first presented using a standard CMOS technology. The proposed Ka -band SATCOM transceiver consists of a high-linearity transmitter (TX) and dual-channel receiver (RX); both TX and RX are based on direct-conversion architecture. By implementing the dual-channel RX, multiple multiplexing modes, including polarization multiplexing and frequency multiplexing, can be enabled depending on the appli- cation. The RX variable gain is distributed in both RF blocks and baseband blocks to achieve a wide input dynamic range. The LNA employs a dual-coupling transformer for a low-noise fig- ure (NF) and wideband input matching; moreover, it enhances the amplifier unilateralization characteristic to mitigate the loading effect from switched attenuators. An adjacent channel interfer- ence (ACI) cancellation scheme is proposed to further enhance the RX linearity in the frequenc y multiplexing mode. In the TX, single-turn high-quality-factor transformer is employed to realize matching network and four-way power combining. A prototype of the SATCOM transceiver is fabricated in a standard 65-nm CMOS process. Under 1.05-V supply voltage, the TX achieves a P SAT of 20.5 dBm and an average output power of 12 dBm with 2% error vector magnitude (EVM) and a 37.6-dB ACPR. The dual-channel RX achieves an NF of 5.4 dB, an IIP3 of −30 dBm on the high-gain mode, the ACI cancellation is measured of 7.9 dB with a 100-MHz signal bandwi