A V-Band OOK Transmitter with 14.5Gbps Data Rate and 11.1% DC-to-RF Efficiency in 65nm CMOS

This paper presents an energy-efficient V-band on-off keying (OOK) transmitter (TX), which integrates a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), a broadband passive modulator, and a broadband baseband amplifier (BBA). A power-oriented design methodology is used in the oscillator design for maximum output power. The passive modulator is a distributed single-pole single-throw (SPST) structure consisting of a transmission line with two switches. The modulator achieves a modulation bandwidth of up to 30GHz, a high on-off ratio of more than 19dB, and an insertion loss of less than 3.6dB. Implemented in a 65nm LP CMOS process, the TX supports a data rate of 14.5 Gbps with a bit error rate (BER) less than 1×10-12. The maximum output power is 4.5dBm with a peak DC-to-RF efficiency of 11.1%, leading to a high figure-of-merit (FoM) value of 1.61.