A 10-40GHz Frequency Quadrupler Source with Switchable Bandpass Filters and >30dBc Harmonic Rejection: RFIC Interactive Forum 2017

This paper presents a 1040 GHz wideband frequency quadrupler in GF8HP 0.13 m SiGe BiCMOS process. Three bands (low-, mid-, and high-band) are implemented on-chip for wideband operation. An on-chip 4-pole switchable elliptic bandpass filter is also used to result in greatly improved harmonic rejection ratio (HRR). The measured worstcase HRR is 3248 dBc at 1140 GHz with an output power of +1 to -8 dBm for Pin= 1 dBm (2532 dB at 1011 GHz). The output power and HRR remain nearly constant with Pin of 07 dBm. The chip is 3.96 mm2 and consumes 60 mW in low- and mid-band modes, and 84 mW for the high-band mode. To our knowledge, this wideband frequency quadrupler represents state-of-the-art performance in terms of bandwidth, HRR and Pout. Application areas are wideband low-harmonic content sources for wideband measurement systems, high-resolution imaging systems and digital beamforming phased-arrays.