Injection Locking Techniques for Low-power Millimeter-wave Phased Array Circuitry

Abstract: Injection locking offers several advantages for low-power, high-precision millimeter-wave phase control and LO generation for phased arrays. Low phase noise signal sources are critical for high-order QAM waveforms and are particularly difficult to realize in silicon integrated circuit processes. Operation in millimeter-wave band aggravates the requirements on oscillator designs due to 1) the effect of frequency multiplication and 2) the inherent losses in integrated resonators. This presentation will review the use of injection locking for millimeter-wave transmitters, outphasing power amplifiers, and phased arrays. I will describe the power efficiency advantages that are realized with injection locking techniques for millimeter-wave bands, particularly above 140 GHz where limited transistor gain is available.