Wideband Transceiver Design for 5G mmWave Phased-Arrays in FinFET Technology

The integration of mm-wave wireless systems in deeply-scaled CMOS processes has great potential to reduce cost and ease scalability of fully-integrated SoCs for 5G phased-array systems. Meeting the higher bandwidths demanded by next-generation wireless systems poses many challenges. For one, the higher intrinsic device ft/fmax offered by device scaling is mitigated by the higher parasitic caused by interconnect scaling at the advanced nodes, thus making wideband design a continued challenge. In this talk, we will first discuss how today’s advanced FinFET process nodes have the potential of enabling wideband circuit performance. We will then discuss the various architecture and circuit-level techniques that can be used for enhancing signal bandwidth in both the mm-Wave front-end as well as the analog baseband. Example designs done in Intel’s 22FFL FinFET process for the E-band (71-76GHz) will be used as a case study.