A 50-Gb/s 134-GHz 16-QAM 3-m Dielectric Waveguide Transceiver System Implemented in 22-nm FinFET CMOS

Abstract

This letter presents a 134 GHz superheterodyne transceiver system in 22nm CMOS for dielectric waveguides measured at reaches up to 3 meters. Greater than 12 GHz of RF bandwidth and 16 QAM signaling combine to achieve 50 Gbps with a measured EVM of -19.8 dB (5x10-6 BER) at a total power consumption of 494 mW from a 1.0 V supply. External 2x2 matrix equalization is employed to equalize channel impairments. The system achieves an FoM of 3.3 pJ/bit/m with the highest reported data rate for waveguide links at a distance greater than 1 m to date. Key transceiver circuit building blocks are described including RF signal paths, wideband baseband amplifiers and filters, an IF amplifier with 44% fractional bandwidth and a coil-less 53.6GHz quadrature divider.