A 60 GHz Highly Linear Fully Integrated Low-IF CMOS Transceiver for Ultrashort-Range Radar Applications

This work presents a 60 GHz fully integrated low-intermediate frequency (IF) transceiver (TRX) for ultrashort-range (USR) frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radars, fabricated in a 28-nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) CMOS process. The radar TRX integrates a front-end, an analog baseband (ABB), a chirp generator, and built-in self-test (BIST) circuitry that enables on-chip loopback test and self-diagnosis. It provides a wide transmitter output power dynamic range (DR) from −14 to 5 dBm to optimize the receiver signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for various scenarios of interest. The receiver achieves an input 1 dB compression point of −6 dBm to handle strong spillover signals through a high-pass filter (HPF)-first ABB, and a noise figure (NF) of 16.6 dB at 115 kHz IF. The chirp generator based on a two-point modulation (TPM) demonstrates high linearity of 164 kHz (0.0027%) at a chirp bandwidth (BW) of 6 GHz. The proposed radar TRX has been experimentally validated for body-proximity sensing (BPS) and vital-sign monitoring (VSM) (respiration and heartbeat rates) applications. The compact design occupies a core area of 2.5 mm2and consumes DC power of 147 mW, making it suitable for mobile device-based solutions.