Frequency synthesis for CMOS-based millimeter-wave communication systems.

In the past few years, the interest in the millimeter-wave spectrum at 30 to 300 GHz has drastically increased. The emergence of low cost high performance CMOS technology and low loss, low cost organic packaging material has opened a new perspective for system designers and service providers because it enables the development of millimeter-wave radio at the same cost structure of radios operating in the gigahertz range or less.

In combination with available ultra-wide bandwidths, this makes the millimeter-wave spectrum more attractive than ever before for supporting a new class of systems and applications ranging from ultra-high speed data transmission, video distribution, portable radar, sensing, detection and imaging of all kinds.