A single-chip 24 GHz receiver front-end using a commercially available SiGe HBT foundry process

The authors have demonstrated a fully integrated receive frontend addressing the ISM-Band at 24 GHz utilizing a standard SiGe HBT MMIC process with a relaxed emitter scaling of 1.2 mum, for the first time. Extremely compact circuit design and layout techniques are applied to a mature Si/SiGe technology, resulting in a low-cost integrated circuit enabling consumer-oriented systems at Ka band. The integrated components are a preamplifier, a mixer with an IF buffer and a local oscillator. The conversion gain is determined to be 16.3 dB for an intermediate frequency of 100 MHz.