Motivation: As one of the hottest areas of wireless communications, the Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) which is standardized by the IEEE802.15 WG, addresses the delivery of information over relatively short distances (“Piconet”) among relatively few participants. The demand for ultra-high data rate wireless systems is increasing daily with the emergence of a multitude of multimedia applications such as High Definition video distribution and ultra-fast file sharing. The availability of several GHz bandwidth unlicensed ISM bands in the 60GHz spectrum represents a great opportunity. The 60GHz spectrum has been selected as the most appropriated band to meet the requirements of the emerging IEEE 802.15.3c standard for WPAN applications.
This demand has since pushed the development of technologies and systems operating at the millimeter-wave frequencies to overcome the current limitations of alternative solutions such as 802.11n (WiFi with MIMO) and UWB. Despite their commercial availability and their outstanding performances, conventional technologies (i.e. pHEMT and ceramic/metal package) struggle to enter the market because of their prohibitive cost and their limited capability to integrate advanced base-band processing.

Researchers of the Gbps Wireless group at the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) recently established a new world record for the highest data rate transmitted wirelessly at 60GHz, enhancing their previous record established in May 2006. A peak data transfer rate of 15 Gigabit/s at a distance of 1 meter, 10 Gigabit/s at a distance of 2 meters and 5 Gigabit/s at a distance of 5 meters have been achieved. In addition wireless HDMI uncompressed video link has been demonstrated.

The research efforts have been focused on the development of CMOS fully integrated 60GHz multi-gigabit radio chips, co-designed with an innovative, low-cost, organic FR4-based 3D integrated module technology. A special emphasis has been put on the implementation of the SM (SISO-MIMO) radio concept, enabling ultra-high data throughput, as well as backward compatibility with WLAN 802.11 systems.

Challenges of enabling a 60 GHz Multi-Gbps radio are 1) CMOS based 60 GHz MMIC design, low power and compact single chip radio, 2) low power ultra-high speed modem, 3) low cost, low loss, compact, 3D packaging 4) high efficiency, high gain antenna.