A Compact 196 GHz FSK Transmitter for Point-to-Point Wireless Communication with Novel Direct Modulation Technique

Abstract

A compact, fully-integrated 196GHz FSK transmitter for point-to-point wireless communication is prototyped with a 55nm SiGe BiCMOS process, demonstrating a single-channel data rate of 10Gb/s with a chip area of 0.68mm². The achieved single-channel data rate is around 5x higher compared with all other FSK wireless transmitters and the chip area is around 4x smaller compared with other state-of-the-art sub-THz wireless transmitters. Unlike conventional FSK transmitters which encode data with two oscillators at different frequencies or with the control voltage of varactors in the LC tank, the proposed FSK transmitter performs data modulation by varying the phase shift of tunable phase shifting couplers in a coupled oscillator loop, resolving the issues of extra power consumption and long frequency settling time. In theory, frequency shift based on this mechanism is instantaneous without overshoot/undershoot issues.