Herbert Zirath

Chalmers University of Technology

A novel co-designed transition from InP monolithic microwave integrated circuits to silicon micromachined waveguides is presented. The transition couples a microstrip line to a substrate waveguide sitting on top of a vertical waveguide. The silicon part of the transition consists of a top and a bottom chip, fabricated in a very low-loss silicon mic...

Graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) exhibit negligible transconductance under two scenarios: for any gate-to-source voltage when the drain-to-source voltage is set to zero and for an arbitrary drain-to-source voltage provided that the gate-to-source voltage equals the Dirac voltage. Hence, extracting the channel and the parasitic series resis...

Due to government and other agency regulations, microwave bands, which range in frequency from 6 to 42 GHz, often have a small bandwidth of a few hundred megahertz, which lowers the data rate for communications. On the other hand, high data rate communications can be realized in millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) frequencies (30–300 GHz). Tens of gigabits p...

A D-band (110-170 GHz) ultra high data rate link is presented and characterized. The circuits are realized in a commercial 130 nm silicon germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS process. The 3-dB bandwidth for both transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) is between 125 -165 GHz, resulting in a 40 GHz bandwidth. The communication link has demonstrated transmissions up t...

A chipset for high datarate polymer microwave fiber (PMF) communication is described. It consist of a PAM-4 RF-DAC and power detector (PD) and is fabricated using a commercial 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS process. A link measurement is performed over a one meter long PMF verifying that the link can support data rates up to 20 Gbps using PAM-4, with a bit err...

A multi-channel backscatter communication and radar sensing system is proposed and demonstrated in this paper. Frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar ranging is integrated with simultaneous uplink data transmission from a self-packaged active radio frequency (RF) tag. A novel package solution is proposed for the RF tag. With the proposed...

A high data rate RF-DAC and a power detector (PD) are designed and fabricated in a 250 nm indium phosphide (InP) double heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) technology. A communication link using the Tx-Rx over polymer microwave fiber (PMF) is measured. The link consists of a pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) modulator and a PD as a demodulator,...

This paper presents design and characterization of single-chip 110–170 GHz (D-band) direct conversion in-phase/quadrature-phase (I/Q) transmitter and receiver monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), realized in a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS process with ft/fmax of 250 GHz/370 GHz. The chipset is suitable for low power wideband communication and ca...

As 5G New Radio (NR) is being rolled out, research effort is being focused on the evolution of what is to come in the post-5G era. In order to meet the diverse requirements of future wireless communication in terms of increased capacity and reduced latency, technologies such as distributed massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO), sub-millimet...

This letter presents a novel approach for packaging millimeter-wave (mmW) and terahertz (THz) circuits. The proposed technique relies on using an on-chip coupling structure that couples the signal to a quarter-wavelength cavity, which in turn couples to either a waveguide (WG) or another chip. The solution also uses a periodic electromagnetic bandg...

In this work, a dual-mode (divide-by-2 and divide-by-3) dynamic frequency divider is presented. A tunable delay gated ring oscillator (TDGRO) topology is proposed for dual-mode operation and bandwidth extension. It uses a 130-nm gate length SiGe BiCMOS technology with the $f_{t}$ and $f_{\mathrm {max}}$ of 250 and 370 GHz, respectively. Verific...

A coded pilot assisted high data rate millimeter-wave receiver topology is presented in this article. A low data rate and low power pseudorandom noise (pn) coded pilot signal is superimposed at the transmitter, and the receiver can use such pilot for carrier recovery (CR) and/or channel estimation regardless of modulation scheme or communication da...

This work presents a packaging technique for Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMIC) demonstrated in a fully integrated receiver (Rx) module at D-band (110 - 170 GHz). The solution consists of a MMIC-to-waveguide transition realized using an on-chip probe mounted in the E-plane of a split-block waveguide module. An Artificial Magnetic Condu...

This Letter presents a non‐galvanic D‐band (110–170 GHz) interconnect realised in embedded wafer level ball grid array (eWLB) packaging technology. The interconnect consists of a patch‐radiator‐based waveguide transition implemented using one of the technology's redistribution layers. The patch radiates to a WR‐6.5 standard waveguide perpendicular...

An enhanced accuracy random binary phase modulated radar is proposed. It can be used in high accuracy monitoring in manufacturing. Compared with the traditional high accuracy radar using frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW), the proposed radar system can be used in a multi-user scenario without occupying more bandwidth. A two-step distance es...

A measurement technique to reduce the error of measured frequency-domain reflection and transmission coefficients, in particular, scattering parameters (S-parameters) measured with a vector network analyzer (VNA), and load reflection coefficients measured in wideband active load-pull system, is proposed. The technique models either the incident or...

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique is obtained significant attention in radar applications for its interference resilience property. In this paper, Fractional Fourier Transformation (FRFT) and phase analysis techniques are proposed to enhance ranging accuracy of an OFDM Radar. A proof-of-concept radar is built and tested at...

This paper reports on a record-low-phase noise D -band signal source with 5 dBm output power, and 1.3 GHz tuning range. The source is based on the unconventional combination of a fundamental frequency 23 GHz oscillator in 150 nm AlGaN/GaN HEMT technology followed by a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS MMIC including a sixtupler and an amplifier. The amplifier ope...

This letter presents a unique low-loss transition from microstrip to full height rectangular waveguide at W-band. This microstrip transition can be made as a part of the mm-wave monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) of arbitrary size, and thus, avoid the use of bond wires at the high-frequency port of the MMIC circuit. As a result, the MMI...

Extremely high data rate communication can potentially be achieved by combining high-order modulations and wide bandwidths at millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequencies. However, it has been challenging to practically implement this combination, even if the SNR of the system appears to be sufficiently high. An explanation from a recent theoretical study...

We are developing millimeter wave (mm-wave) components and circuits based on hydrogen-intercalated graphene. The development covers epitaxial graphene growth, device fabrication, modelling, integrated circuit design and fabrication, and circuit characterizations. The focus of our work is to utilize the distinctive graphene properties and realize ne...

The high-frequency performance of transistors is usually assessed by speed and gain figures of merit, such as the maximum oscillation frequency fmax, cutoff frequency fT, ratio fmax/fT, forward transmission coefficient S21, and open-circuit voltage gain Av. All these figures of merit must be as large as possible for transistors to be useful in prac...

A differential variable gain amplifier (VGA) for wideband baseband signals has been designed, analyzed, and implemented in a 0.25-μm InP double heterojunction bipolar transistor technology with f <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> /f <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/Math...

In recent years, the demand for high data rate wireless communications has increased dramatically, which requires larger bandwidth to sustain multi-user accessibility and quality of services. This can be achieved at millimeter wave frequencies. Graphene is a promising material for the development of millimeter-wave electronics because of its outsta...

This letter presents the design, fabrication and characterization of the first graphene based monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) in microstrip technology operating in W-band. The circuit is a resistive mixer in a 250 nm graphene field effect transistor (G-FET) technology on a SiC substrate. A conversion loss of 18 dB is achieved which i...

Datacenters demand higher speed vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) based optical interconnects at low-power consumption. As a potential technology enabler, this paper presents a wide-bandwidth and energy-efficient multilevel pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM) VCSEL driver implemented in an InP 0.25 μm double-heterojunction bipolar transis...

A stacked high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) power amplifier (PA) has been designed and implemented in a commercial 0.1-μm InGaAs pHEMT process to increase gain and output power at millimeter-wave frequencies. The stability problem of the stacked HEMT has been analyzed. A new layout of the stacked HEMT for improving the high frequency stabili...

A systematic design procedure for highly linear and reliable amplifiers is proposed. The procedure deals with nonlinear modeling, junction temperature prediction methods, and circuit design techniques. A wideband linear monolithic microwave integrated circuit power amplifier based on a space-qualified GaAs process for $C$-band and extended C-band m...

This letter demonstrates a packaging concept where a waveguide-to-microstrip transition can be assimilated on a mm-wave MMIC of an arbitrary size and thus avoid the use of bond wires at the high frequency ports of the MMIC circuit. The advantage of the proposed concept is that- it does not require an extra substrate with sub-critical dimensions for...

This paper presents a study to use the metallic three dimensional (3-D) printing technology for antenna implementations up to 325 GHz. Two different printing technologies and materials are used, namely binder jetting/sintering on 316L stainless steel and selective laser melting (SLM) on Cu–15Sn. Phases, microstructure, and surface roughness are inv...

This paper compares the noise performance of two different types of time-domain microwave detection systems: a pulsed system and a pseudo-random noise sequence system. System-level simulations and laboratory-based measurements are carried out in the study. Results show that the effect of timing jitter is more significant on the measurement accuracy...

This paper presents design and characterization of single-chip 110–170-GHz ( -band) direct conversion in-phase/quadrature-phase (I/Q) transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), realized in a 250-nm indium phosphide (InP) double heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) technology. The chipset is suitable for...

We demonstrate the demodulation of a multi-Gb/s ON-OFF keying (OOK) signal on a 96 GHz carrier by utilizing a 250-nm graphene field-effect transistor as a zero bias power detector. From the eye diagram, we can conclude that the devices can demodulate the OOK signals up to 4 Gb/s.

An antenna on organic substrate liquid crystal polymer (LCP) is proposed for the D-band antenna-in-package (AiP) application. The intrinsic softness of the LCP material is a limiting factor of the antenna's aperture size. A 0.5 mm thick copper core is used to compensate the intrinsic softness of the organic substrate. By doing this, the rigidness o...

A high speed differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) modulator and demodulator (modem) is presented for data rates up to 40 Gbps, in which the modulator is based on an FPGA and the demodulator is based on analog components. The modem performance has been verified in a lab environment. The targeted application is wireless communications u...

This paper presents the fabrication process development of monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) based on graphene field effect transistors (G-FETs). In this process, the G-FETs are based on epitaxial graphene on SiC substrate. Base on this process, a wide-band amplifier (0–3GHz) with 6–7 dB gain is realized.

An indium phosphide HEMT MMIC process was developed for ultralow noise amplifiers (LNAs) at cryogenic temperatures. The process was run on 4" wafers and utilized 130 nm gate-length HEMTs. Several wide band LNAs were made in a frequency range between 1 GHz and 100 GHz. A Ka band LNA had a minimum noise temperature of 10 K and a gain of 35 dB.

3D metallic printing technology is attempted to implement millimeter-wave (mmWave) antennas. Based on laser beam melting (LBM) technology, the cost and turnaround time of metallic horn antenna fabrication is effectively reduced compared with traditional milling and injection moulding. A conical and a pyramidal horn antenna are printed in 316L stain...

A novel full D-band (110–170 GHz) multi-mode transconductance down-converter mixer is realized in a 250-nm indium–phosphide double heterojunction bipolar transistor technology. A single-balanced topology is chosen and an active power combiner for the RF and the local oscillator (LO) signals’ combination is used. The designed mixer is feasible to wo...

This paper reports on an ultra-low phase-noise oscillator based on a GaN HEMT monolithic microwave integrated circuit reflection amplifier and an aluminum cavity resonator. It is experimentally investigated how the oscillator’s phase noise depends on the cavity coupling factor, phase matching, and bias condition of the reflection amplifier. For the...

Integration of a 140-GHz packaged low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) antenna with a power detector is demonstrated under the concept of antenna-in-package. The detector is designed on an indium phosphide (InP) process. A grid array antenna in LTCC is designed to provide package for the detector. Coplanar ground–signal–ground (GSG) bond wires ar...

This is a specially commissioned editorial from the Graphene Flagship Work Package on High Frequency Electronics. This editorial is part of the 2D Materials focus collection on 'Progress on the science and applications of two-dimensional materials', published in association with the Graphene Flagship. It provides an overview of key, recent advances...

In this paper, a novel 8-phase-shift-keying (8-PSK) carrier recovery and demodulation method using a comparator and frequency divider is proposed. A proof-of-concept 8-PSK demodulator for high-data-rate millimeter-wave communication systems is designed and tested, which can support 8-PSK transmission up to 15 Gb/s with a bit error rate less than {\...

For dense small cell deployment in centralized baseband architecture, wireless fronthaul is a cost efficient and flexible alternative to fiber-based fronthaul links. Due to the available wide bandwidth, millimeter-wave technology is the most promising choice to realize multi-gigabit wireless transmission of the common public radio interface (CPRI)....

Integrated circuits (ICs) with multilayer backend process and a large front-side ground plane support the propagation of parasitic substrate modes. These modes resonate at frequencies that typically are within the bandwidth of circuits operating close to and in the submillimeter-wave range, i.e., beyond 300 GHz. The resonances cause unwanted coupli...

Injection locking based QPSK demodulation have been reported in several publication, however the data rate is less than Gbps. In this paper, the theory of an oscillator injection locks to a wideband modulated signal is studied. Based on the principle study, a proof of concept QPSK coherent baseband receiver is designed and verified. The receiver is...

This paper presents design and characterization of D-band (110–170 GHz) monolithic microwave integrated quadrature up- and down-converting mixer circuits with on-chip RF and local oscillator (LO) baluns. The circuits are fabricated in 250-nm indium–phosphide double heterojunction bipolar transistor technology. The mixers require an external LO sign...

Three wideband amplifiers in double-heterojunction bipolar transistor technology have been designed and measured. The amplifiers use different types of distributed amplifier (DA) topologies, all based on cascode gain cells. A single-stage DA design achieves 7.5-dB gain and 192-GHz bandwidth and a two-cascaded single-stage DA achieves an average gai...

DC, RF and noise characteristics of advanced InP/InGaAs and Si/SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) were measured and modeled in a broad frequency range. Equations for systematically modeled correlated noise in bipolar transistors and their implementation in the compact models HICUM/L0 and L2 are proposed. The models are verified for adva...

In this paper, we present WR05 (140-220 GHz) and WR03 (220-325 GHz) five-stage amplifier modules with novel membrane microstrip-to-waveguide transitions. The modules use a 250-nm InP double heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) technology and multilayer thin-film microstrip transmission lines. The waveguide transitions use E-plane probes on 3- μ...

Epitaxial graphene is grown on semi-insulating (SI) 4H-SiC in a hot wall CVD reactor by graphitization and in-situ intercalation with (H)ydrogen. A holistic material characterization is performed in order to ascertain the number of layers, layer uniformity, and electron transport properties of the epi-layers via electronic test structures and Raman...

This paper presents a time domain microwave system developed for medical diagnostics. An imaging test was carried out with the developed prototype and reconstructed images were compared with those obtained by using a network analyzer. Results show small difference between reconstructions, which validates the imaging functionality of the prototype.

For linear multi-pixel imaging systems, a linear stack of pixels comprising of an antenna and a heterodyne receiver are needed. Such pixels can be realized using MMIC processes. The main constraint for such multi-pixel system is a compact array of pixels giving high coupling to quasi-optics used for focusing. This paper addresses this trade-off and...

In this paper, a time-domain system dedicated to medical diagnostics has been designed, a prototype has been built and its performance has been evaluated. Measurements show that the system has a 3-dB bandwith of about 3.5 GHz and a signal to noise ratio over 40 dB in the frequency range about 800 MHz to 3.8 GHz. The system has been used to perform...

A D-band frequency quadrupler consisting of two cascaded push-push doublers is designed and manufactured in a 0.25 InP DHBT technology. Each doubler has a Marchand balun implemented by broadside-coupled transmission lines, folded in a rectangular shape. The second balun, operating at a half of output frequency, is located inside of the first one fo...

A highly integrated chipset comprising a transmitter (TX) and a receiver (RX) chip, based on a 250 nm InP DHBT technology for high data rate D-band (110-170 GHz) wireless communication is described. The chipset is designed for point-to-point wireless communication for 4G and 5G mobile communication infrastructure, high data rate backhaul, low-laten...

A negative resistance Indium Phosphide MMIC subcircuit element is presented that employs a Double-Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor in Common Emitter configuration with series feedback. The fabricated MMIC exhibits negative resistance up to 231GHz, this being the highest known frequency at which negative resistance has been measured for a transisto...

An InP MMIC process was developed and optimized for ultra-low noise amplifiers (LNAs) operating at cryogenic temperature. The amplifiers from the process are working up to 100 GHz. The processed wafers are 4" and can carry more than 4000 3-stage units. For a significant number of 6-20 GHz 3-stage LNAs we have measured an average noise temperature o...

The 'gain expansion' of a subharmonically pumped mixer (SHM) is utilized for the first time, to compensate for the 'gain compression' of the cascaded amplifier. Consequently, a linear two-stage SHM is obtained. A proof-of-concept circuit is designed and manufactured in a 0.25 μm InP DHBT process, which down-converts a V-band RF signal to an IF sign...

We present the science and technology roadmap (STR) for graphene, related two-dimensional (2d) crystals, and hybrid systems, targeting an evolution in technology, with impacts and benefits reaching into most areas of society. The roadmap was developed within the framework of the European Graphene Flagship and outlines the main targets and research...

This paper presents a 153-162 GHz pre-amplified power detector receiver based on a 250 nm InP/InGaAs/InP double heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) process. The front end consists of a double slot antenna followed by a five stage low noise amplifier and a detector. The receiver is characterized through measurements of its response to broadband...

A $D$-band power detector (PD) consisting of a four-way power divider and four identical active PD units is proposed, where four individual PD units are derived by the input signals having the same amplitude, but a 90 $^{circ}$ phase difference. The outputs of the PD units are combined, to suppress the first, second, and third harmonics due to phas...

A frequency tunable signal source (100) with first (105) and a second (115, 315) oscillators, each of which outputs a signal at a fundamental frequency (f1, f2) and at least one signal at a harmonic frequency (f1′, f2′) and a mixer (120) with first (121) and second (122) input ports and an output port (124), and a control unit (110) which controls...

This letter presents guidelines for the design of low phase noise oscillators in GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology. The design starts from bias-dependent low-frequency (LF) noise measurements. Oscillator topology and bias point are then chosen for operation in regions where LF noise is low. The best LF noise properties are obt...

Two wideband amplifier MMICs are designed and tested. Both designs employ InP double-heterojunction bipolar transistor technology. The amplifiers are designed using cascode cells, in a distributed amplifier topology, with simple on-chip resistive bias circuitry. A single stage design achieves 7.5 dB gain and 192 GHz bandwidth and a 2-cascaded distr...

A combination of techniques for designing high linearity power amplifiers under controlled junction temperature required for space applications is explained and demonstrated. Junction temperature calculation is taken into account in the transistor selection to ensure high reliability operation and is verified by IR measurement. A non linear model i...

An on-off keying (OOK) modulator and demodulator operating at carrier frequency from 100 GHz to 150 GHz are designed and manufactured in a 0.25 μm InP DHBT Technology. The modulator is based on a switch controlled frequency quadrupler, which is driven by input data and a sinusoid signal source. A power detector consisting of a 4-way power divider a...