Introduction

This project aimed at the realization of a single 24-GHz radar transceiver chip with Global Foundry 0.13 µm CMOS process. Using a CMOS process instead of a GaAs process in K-band can lower the cost, which is one of the very important factors for radar applications in consumer electronics and bio-medical.

In this project, I collaborated with a local startup company, yearONE LLC. I took in charge of the transmitter part, which included a LC-tank VCO, a poly-phase filter, several RF buffers and a matching network for package. In order to minimize the cost, we used the Quad Flat No-leads (QFN) package to package the chip.

Prototype

Cadence Virtuoso was used for the design. The final layout is shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 2 is the photo of the fabricated IC die, which has the size of 2 mm x 2 mm.

Fig. 1. Layout of the designed 24-GHz radar transceiver

Fig. 2. Photo of the fabricated chip