A 210-GHz Magnetless Nonreciprocal Isolator in 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS Based on Resistor-Free Unidirectional Ring Resonators

Nonreciprocal components such as circulators, isolators, and gyrators play vital roles in modern communication systems. However, all of them are limited to 0.1 terahertz (THz) due to their poor performances in terms of linearity, loss, and noise at high frequency, making them not amenable for the po...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE microwave and wireless components letters Vol. 30; no. 5; pp. 524 - 527
Main Authors Wang, Yunfan, Chen, Wenhua, Li, Xingcun
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.05.2020
Subjects
Circulator
Isolators
Linearity
Noise measurement
nonreciprocity
Optical ring resonators
Resonant frequency
Resonators
Silicon germanium
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Summary:Nonreciprocal components such as circulators, isolators, and gyrators play vital roles in modern communication systems. However, all of them are limited to 0.1 terahertz (THz) due to their poor performances in terms of linearity, loss, and noise at high frequency, making them not amenable for the potential sub-THz/THz operation. In this letter, a 210-GHz nonreciprocal isolator based on the resistor-free unidirectional ring resonators is implemented in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS process (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">f_{T}/f_{\mathrm {max}} = 300 </tex-math></inline-formula>/500 GHz). Thanks to the proposed resistor-free ring resonators, the isolator achieves 1.40-dB loss, 6.7-dB noise figure (NF)/unit, 21.2-dB isolation, and superior linearity. Even compared with the nonreciprocal components operating at a much lower frequency, this structure also exhibits a good performance.
ISSN:1531-1309
1558-1764
DOI:10.1109/LMWC.2020.2985865