Wideband, Compact and Efficient Frequency Quadrupler for Sub-Harmonic Transceiver in 130nm SiGe BiCMOS Technology

This paper proposes a compact and efficient frequency quadrupler (FQ) intended for a sub-harmonic transceiver. The circuit is based on stacked double bootstrapped Gilbert cell (GC) and works at the frequency band of 110-150GHz. It consists of two stacked mixing stages. The GC stages individually perform as a doubler for the input frequency, and the resultant quadrupled signal appears at the output of the second GC stage. The FQ achieves the peak conversion gain of 6.6dB and the maximum output power of -1dBm. The 3-dB bandwidth of this FQ is 40GHz(110-150GHz). Due to the compact design without compromising the performance, the stand-alone FQ Chip occupies only $0.056\text{mm}^{2}$ chip area and consumes only 13.4mA of current from the 3.3V supply. It achieves the maximum drain efficiency of 1.81%. The presented FQ is suitable for the frequency generation circuit in various system design applications above 100GHz.