A 60-GHz 8-Way Phased-Array Front-End With T/R Switching and Calibration-Free Beamsteering in 28-nm CMOS

An eight-way phased-array TRX front-end with RF phase shifting and on-chip transmit/receive switching is implemented in 28-nm CMOS. The TX P-1dBout and RX noise figure (NF) are 10 dBm and 6.8 dB, respectively. The active phase shifter shows less than 5 degrees phase resolution and amplitude errors within +/- 0.35 dB. The 9.6-mm(2) chip consumes 231 mW in RX and 508 mW in the TX mode from a 0.9-V supply. When combined with PCB antennas, a +/- 46 degrees scan angle is obtained with <0.4 dB peak-to-peak gain ripples without calibration. We also present an approach to express the noise performance of a phased-array receiver in terms of the effective isotropic NF, as an extension to the NF, which is only defined for a two-port system.