Wireless Data Transfer Using the 60 GHz Band

Wireless techniques have developed extremely fast over the last decade and are now mature for being considered as a promising alternative to cables and optical links that would revolutionize the detector design. Today, millimeter-wave (mm-wave) is a well developed field of electronics. Advanced silicon-integration technologies, which provides production level transistors with ft/fmax of more than 300 GHz are the key part for wireless applications in the mm-wave. The mm-wave band covers the electromagnetic spectrum between 30 and 300 GHz, that is further divided into smaller bands based on user applications. At this stage it is ecided to focus on the 60 GHz band due to ist extraordinary features for short range data transfer. The 60 GHz band offers high bandwidth of 9 GHz, high interference immunity, high frequency re-use and high security. The high bandwidth allow a wireless data transfer in the multi-Gbps range. This developments are mainly driven by the demand for high bandwidth that keeps increasing at a significant rate. This is due to the incredible number of users and applications, which has largely increased during the last years. This includes vehicular communication systems, mobile phone,consumer electronics and aerospace applications to mentioned few. As many of the of the applications mentioned above will benefit from this increased bandwidth, the time has now come to introduce this to the HEP community. The status of a first prototype of the 60 GHz Multi-gigabit data transfer topology currently under development at University of Heidelberg using IBM 130 nm SiGe HBT BiCMOS technology will be presented. Moreover, a transmission test to evaluate the influence and other potential issues that could appear under operation of a 60 GHz RF signal on electronics and material used for the ATLAS tracker readout will also be presented.