A 39 GHz Dual-Channel Transceiver Chipset with an Advanced LTCC Package for 5G Multi-Beam MIMO Systems

This article presents a 39 GHz transceiver front-end chipset for 5G multi-input multi-output (MIMO) applications. Each chip includes two variable-gain frequency-conversion channels and can support two simultaneous independent beams, and the chips also integrate a local-oscillator chain and digital module for multi-chip extension and gain-state control. To improve the radio-frequency performance, several circuit-level improvement techniques are proposed for the key building blocks in the front-end system. Furthermore, an advanced low-temperature co-fired ceramic process is developed to package the 39 GHz dual-channel transceiver chipset, and it achieves low packaging loss and high isolation between the two transmitting (TX)/receiving (RX) channels. Both the chip-level and system-in-package (SIP)-level mea-surements are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the transceiver chipset. The measurement characteristics show that the TX SIP provides 11 dB maximum gain and 10 dBm saturated output power, while the RX SIP achieves 52 dB maximum gain, 5.4 dB noise figure, and 7.2 dBm output 1 dB compres-sion point. Single-channel communication link testing of the transceiver exhibits an error vector magni-tude (EVM) of 3.72% and a spectral efficiency of 3.25 bit center dot s(-1)center dot Hz(-1) for 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulation and an EVM of 3.76% and spectral efficiency of 3.90 bit center dot s(-1)center dot Hz(-1) for 256-QAM modulation over a 1 m distance. Based on the chipset, a 39 GHz multi-beam prototype is also developed to perform the MIMO operation for 5G millimetre wave applications. The over-the-air commu-nication link for one-and two-stream transmission indicates that the multi-beam prototype can cover a 5-150 m distance with comparable throughput. (c) 2022 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education Press Limited Company. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).