Abstract
This study presents an ultra-wideband receiver front-end, designed for a reconfigurable frequency modulated continuous wave radar in a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. A variety of innovative circuit components and design techniques were employed to achieve the ultra-wide bandwidth, low noise figure (NF), good linearity, and circuit ruggedness to high input power levels. The designed front-end is capable of achieving 1.5–40 GHz bandwidth, 30 dB conversion gain, a double sideband NF of 6–10.7 dB, input return loss better than 7.5 dB and an input referred 1 dB compression point of −23 dBm. The front-end withstands continuous wave power levels of at least 25 and 20 dBm at low band and high band inputs respectively. At 3 V supply voltage, the DC power consumption amounts to 302 mW when the low band is active and 352 mW for the high band case, whereas the total IC size is
$3.08\, {\rm nm{^2}}$
.
RF Front End for an Integrated Silhouette Capture and Boundary
Detection Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave Ultra-Wideband Radar
System for the Extension of Independent Living