A Highly Efficient 165-GHz 4FSK 17-Gb/s Transceiver System With Frequency Overlapping Architecture in 65-nm CMOS

A new four-frequency-shift keying (4FSK) transceiver (TRX) at 145-185-GHz operation frequency is presented. The proposed non-coherent TRX is a fully integrated bit-in-bit-out communication system without the need for separate modulators/demodulators (modems). The transmitter (TX) core includes only one voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), which can generate four different frequencies based on the two parallel streams of binary data at its input. The receiver (RX) with a frequency overlapping architecture demodulates the 4FSK signal and recovers the two parallel streams of binary data. Both the TX and the RX are designed and fabricated in a standard 65-nm CMOS process. The TX and RX consume 62- and 120-mW power, respectively. The highest achieved data rate is 17 Gb/s at an 18-cm link distance with 10.7-pJ/bit energy efficiency.