Design of High-Speed SiGe HBT Circuits for Wideband Transceivers

Abstract

The objective of this work was to design high-speed circuits using silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) and complementary SiGe (C-SiGe) HBTs, as well as silicon (Si) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices, for next-generation ultra-wideband (UWB) transceivers. The advantages of using UWB systems over conventional narrowband transceivers include their lower power requirements, higher data rate, more efficient spectrum usage, precise positioning capability, lower complexity, and lower cost. The two major components in a UWB transceiver IC are the radio frequency (RF) circuit and the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). In this work, circuit-level solutions to improve the speed and performance of critical building blocks in both the RF front-end and the ADC are presented. Device-related issues affecting SiGe HBTs for potential applications in UWB systems intended for use in extreme environments will also be investigated. This research envisions to realize various circuit blocks in a UWB transceiver including, a 3-10 GHz UWB low noise amplifiers (LNAs) in both the second (120 GHz) and third (200 GHz) SiGe technologies, an 8-bit 12 GSample/sec SiGe BiCMOS track-and-hold amplifier (THA), and a fifth order elliptic gm-c low-pass filter in C-SiGe HBT technology. This research will also focus on characterizing SiGe HBTs for UWB electronics for operation in extreme environments by investigating the proton radiation effects in the third generation SiGe HBTs.