A W-band stacked FET power amplifier with 17 dBm Psat in 45-nm SOI CMOS

Author

Jayamon, J. ; Agah, A. ; Hanafi, B. ; Dabag, H. ; Buckwalter, J. ; Asbeck, P.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

20-20 Jan. 2013

Firstpage

85

Lastpage

87

Abstract

A 90GHz power amplifier implemented with three series-connected (stacked) FETs in 45-nm SOI CMOS is reported. Stacking FETs allows increasing voltage handling capability of circuits with highly scaled CMOS transistors. This work shows for the first time that the stacking strategy is effective up to W band. The amplifier achieves power gain of 8 dB at 91 GHz with 3 dB bandwidth of 18 GHz using a supply voltage of 4.2 V. It delivers saturated output power of 17.3 dBm in 88-90 GHz range with peak PAE of 9 %. The PA chip occupies 0.256 mm² including the pads. This chip demonstrates the highest output power from a CMOS PA in this frequency regime.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; MOSFET; millimetre wave amplifiers; millimetre wave integrated circuits; silicon-on-insulator; PA chip; PAE; SOI CMOS; W-band stacked FET power amplifier; bandwidth 18 GHz; efficiency 9 percent; frequency 88 GHz to 90 GHz; frequency regime; gain 8 dB; highly scaled CMOS transistors; series-connected FET; size 45 nm; voltage 4.2 V; voltage handling capability; CMOS integrated circuits; Field effect transistors; Gain; Logic gates; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Stacking; CMOS SOI; Power amplifier; W-band; millimeter-wave; stacked FET;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Power Amplifiers for Wireless and Radio Applications (PAWR), 2013 IEEE Topical Conference on

Conference_Location

Santa Clara, CA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2915-6

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4673-2931-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PAWR.2013.6490197

Filename

6490197