A 27.5dBm EIRP D-Band Transmitter Module on a Ceramic Interposer

We present a fully packaged D-band direct conversion transmitter module on a low-permittivity ceramic carrier (Kyocera GL771, epsilon(r) = 5.2, delta =0.003). The module has a broadband 135GHz 22FDX CMOS direct conversion transmitter, a medium-power (100mW Psat) high-efficiency power amplifier implemented in Teledyne 250nm InP HBT technology, and a series-fed microstrip patch antenna array. The CMOS IC is flip-chip bonded to the carrier using 50 mu m diameter copper studs, while the InP IC is wire bonded, with impedance-matching networks on the carrier compensating for the wire bonds' parasitic impedances. The module has 6GHz 3-dB modulation bandwidth and 27.5dBm measured effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) at saturation. Under 5Gbaud, 64QAM modulation (30Gbps), the module shows 8.5% RMS error vector magnitude (EVM) at 21.5dBm EIRP. To our knowledge, the module has the highest reported EIRP and efficiency among D-band single channel transmitters.