6G Architectures and Technology Partitioning for Communication and Sensing

For ultra-high-speed wireless communication for short range, spectrum above 100GHz offers a wide bandwidth that is not available in frequency bands used today. Operation above 100GHz definitely requires the use of beamforming. For the front-ends of D-band radio transceivers, non-CMOS technologies such as SiGe BiCMOS and InP are superior to CMOS, especially for efficiently generating transmit power. This presentation highlights the heterogeneous integration of antenna arrays for beamforming with non-CMOS transceiver front-end circuits and complex CMOS chips that realize the rest of the transceiver functionality. Various integration options are considered, and measurement results of key components are presented.