A CMOS Integrated W-band Passive Imager

This brief presents an integrated W-band passive imager, including a low-noise amplifier, a Dicke switch, a detector, a low-pass filter, a programmable-gain amplifier, and a 10-bit 20-MHz pipeline analog-to-digital converter (ADC). With digital outputs, the imager is ready to be interfaced with a digital signal processor to complete its system implementation. The chip is realized in a 65-nm CMOS technology. The measured average noise-equivalent power and responsivity are 32 fW/√{Hz} and 103 MV/W, respectively, which represents a noise-equivalent temperature difference of 1.0 K with 30-ms integration time. The integrated imager occupies a silicon area of 1.17 mm 2 and burns 151 mW of power. To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first time that a millimeter-wave passive imager is integrated with an on-chip ADC to generate digital outputs.