14.2 A 79GHz phase-modulated 4GHz-BW CW radar TX in 28nm CMOS

• Published in: 2014 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers (ISSCC) pp. 250 - 251
• Main Authors: Giannini, Vito, Guermandi, Davide, Qixian Shi, Vaesen, Kristof, Parvais, Bertrand, Van Thillo, Wim, Bourdoux, Andre, Soens, Charlotte, Craninckx, Jan, Wambacq, Piet
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.02.2014
• Subjects: Bandwidth; CMOS integrated circuits; Modulation; Power generation; Radar; Radio frequency; Voltage-controlled oscillators
• ISBN: 1479909181; 9781479909186
• ISSN: 0193-6530; 2376-8606
• DOI: 10.1109/ISSCC.2014.6757421

This paper describes a phase-modulated Continuous-Wave (CW) Radar TX that operates in the 79GHz band. With a sampling rate of 2GS/s and 4GHz RF bandwidth, we target a resolution of 7cm. We rely on a Pseudo-Random-Noise (PRN) maximum length sequence of 511 bits and BPSK modulation targeting three benefits. First, SNR is increased by 27dB thanks to compression gain. Second, a code-domain MIMO radar is now possible yielding both higher angular resolution for a given number of antenna elements and higher combined output power than a similar time-domain MIMO radar. Finally, interference rejection techniques can be applied in the digital domain. Such radar architecture is digital intensive so that a CMOS technology allows for a more power-efficient implementation compared to equivalent SiGe state-of-the-art [7-8]. This paper proposes the first 79GHz radar TX in 28nm CMOS.