A true-RMS integrated power sensor for on-chip calibration

Abstract

An on-chip RF power sensor based on the bolometer principle is presented in this work. The sensor can be used for transmitter calibration purposes without using any RF equipment offering time and cost savings. Investigations on various layers of the fT =170 GHz SiGe bipolar technology, which is used in this work, are performed and evaluated. Especially silicided polysilicon layers show a promising behavior as bolometer.Measurements on a 76 GHz transmitter chip are performed to point out the feasibility of the on-chip absolute RF power sensor. The results show that this novel sensor concept is well suited for on-chip self-calibration.

Built-In Self-Test of Millimeter-Wave Integrated Front-End Circuits: How Far Have We Come?

“…Instead of using a temperature stable resistor, [94] investigates several resistive layers in a standard SiGe technology for one with a particularly high thermal coefficient. Silicided polysilicon is identified as being suitable for the implementation of 50 Ω thermistors that can handle the expected output power of 15 dBm coming from a 77 GHz automotive radar PA.…”

“…The impact of thermal coupling on the accuracy has to be characterized. A potential solution lies in the proposal put forth in [94], [95]. As explained above, these studies suggest utilizing thermal sensors exclusively as calibrators for other power detectors.…”

67‐90 GHz broadband power detector with 3 GHz output bandwidth for on‐chip test of millimeter‐wave circuits

“…A key element in such systems is the power detector, as it allows sensing the RF power at critical nodes of the circuit, without requiring complex and costly test setups. Hence, great effort has been placed on the design of integrated power detectors …”

“…Hence, great effort has been placed on the design of integrated power detectors. 5,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] Desired characteristics of power detectors include low insertion loss, compact size, and broad bandwidth. Most of the reported circuits successfully detect continuous wave (CW) or modulated signals with a narrow bandwidth.…”