A 165-GHz Transmitter With 10.6% Peak DC-to-RF Efficiency and 0.68-pJ/b Energy Efficiency in 65-nm Bulk CMOS

This paper presents a high-efficiency 165-GHz ON-OFF keying transmitter in a 65-nm CMOS technology with the record efficiency to the best of our knowledge. This is due to the proposed holistic design and optimization procedure, which links all the performance and figure-of-merits to the device sizes, including both actives and passives. This transmitter includes a high-efficiency transformer-based fundamental frequency cross-coupled oscillator and a high-speed and high ON-OFF ratio single-pole single-throw switch-based modulator. The transmitter demonstrates the highest dc-to-RF efficiency (10.6%) beyond 140 GHz in silicon processes, with a high output power (0.66 dBm), a high ON-OFF ratio (>32 dB), and a low phase noise (-104.8 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset). The transmitter achieves 9.4-Gbps data rate of less than 1 × 10 -12 bit error rate with 0.68-pJ/b energy efficiency. The standalone oscillator also demonstrates the record dc-to-RF efficiency of 25.9% beyond 140 GHz in silicon processes. The transmitter consumes core area of 240 μm × 130 μm.