Area reduction of millimeter-wave CMOS amplifier using narrow transmission line

This paper presents small-area 60 GHz amplifiers using narrow transmission line. All the circuits presented by the authors were designed using narrow transmission line with a 6 μm signal line width. Because the phase constant of a narrow transmission line is larger, impedance matching is achieved using a much shorter line length compared with matching using a wider transmission line. Single-stage amplifiers utilizing narrow and wide transmission lines were fabricated and compared in 65nm CMOS process. Use of narrow transmission lines can reduce layout area by 60% while achieving a measured power gain of 6.54 dB, a measured output power at 1 dB compression point of 4.35dBm and a measured saturated output power of 8.0 dB.