F-band Frequency Multipliers with Fundamental and Harmonic Rejection for Improved Conversion Gain and Output Power

This paper introduces several design techniques to improve the performance of CMOS frequency multipliers that operate at the sub-THz band without increasing the complexity and the power consumption of the circuit. The proposed techniques are applied to a device nonlinearity-based frequency tripler and to a push-push frequency doubler. By utilizing the fundamental and second harmonic feedback cancellation, the tripler achieves -2.9dBm output power with a simple single-ended circuit architecture reducing the required area and power consumption. The tripler operates at frequencies from 103GHz to 130GHz. The introduced modified push-push doubler provides 2.3dB conversion gain including the balun losses and it has good tolerance against balun mismatches. The output frequency of the doubler is from 118GHz to 124GHz. Both circuits were designed and fabricated using CMOS 65nm technology.