A Comparative Analysis between Standard and mm-Wave Optimized BEOL in a Nanoscale CMOS Technology

Electronics

Giuseppe Palmisano¹  Andrea Cavarra¹  Simone Spataro¹  Egidio Ragonese¹  Claudio Nocera¹  Giuseppe Papotto² 

[1] Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica e Informatica (DIEEI), University of Catania, 95125 Catania, Italy;STMicroelectronics, 95121 Catania, Italy;

关键词: back-end-of-line (BEOL);    CMOS technology;    conversion gain;    down-converter;    electromagnetic simulations;    integrated transformers;   

DOI  :  10.3390/electronics9122124

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This paper presents an extensive comparison of two 28-nm CMOS technologies, i.e., standard and mm-wave-optimized (i.e., thick metals and intermetal oxides) back-end-of-line (BEOL). The proposed comparison is carried out at both component and circuit level by means of a quantitative analysis of the actual performance improvements due to the adoption of a mm-wave-optimized BEOL. To this end, stand-alone transformer performance is first evaluated and then a complete mm-wave macroblock is investigated. A 77-GHz down-converter for frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) long-range/medium range (LR/MR) radar applications is exploited as a testbench. For the first time, it is demonstrated that thicker metals and intermetal oxides do not guarantee significant improvements at mm-wave frequencies and a standard (low-cost) BEOL is competitive in comparison with more complex (expensive) ones.

【 授权许可】

Unknown