Title :
A Q-band power amplifier with high-gain pre-driver and 18.7 dBm output power for fully integrated CMOS transmitters
Author :
Wei Tai ; Ricketts, David S.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Abstract :
A high-gain, Q-band power amplifier (PA) implemented in 45-nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS is presented. The PA is designed for fully integrated radios and provides 30.7 dB of gain to allow the digital baseband to fully saturate the PA at 18.7 dBm output power. This is achieved with an overall power-added efficiency (PAE), including all pre-driver and impedance matching networks, of 18.1%. The raw PAE of the PA unit cell is 29%. This PA provides the highest reported gain of single CMOS PAs in the Q-band and one of the highest Psat and raw PAE per PA cell. In addition the digital implementation of the pre-driver enabled the overall die area to be smaller than comparable Q-band PAs, with a core area of 0.12 mm2.
Keywords :
CMOS analogue integrated circuits; impedance matching; integrated circuit design; integrated circuit testing; microwave power amplifiers; preamplifiers; radio transmitters; silicon-on-insulator; CMOS PA; PA unit cell; PAE; Q-band PA; Q-band power amplifier; SOI CMOS; Si; core area; die area; digital baseband; digital implementation; fully integrated CMOS transmitters; fully integrated radios; gain 30.7 dB; high-gain predriver; impedance matching networks; power-added efficiency; silicon-on-insulator CMOS; size 45 nm; CMOS integrated circuits; Frequency measurement; Gain; Impedance matching; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Voltage measurement; Millimeter-wave; Q-band; power amplifiers; preamplifiers;
Conference_Titel :
Power Amplifiers for Wireless and Radio Applications (PAWR), 2014 IEEE Topical Conference on
Conference_Location :
Newport Beach, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4799-2298-7
DOI :
10.1109/PAWR.2014.6825720
