A fully-integrated self-healing power amplifier

Author

Bowers, Steven M. ; Sengupta, Kaushik ; Dasgupta, Kaushik ; Hajimiri, Ali

Author_Institution

California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

fYear

2012

fDate

17-19 June 2012

Firstpage

221

Lastpage

224

Abstract

A fully-integrated self-healing mm-wave power amplifier heals process variation, load mismatch, and transistor failure with on-chip sensors, actuators and an integrated digital algorithm ASIC without external calibration. Measurements of 20 chips showed increased RF power up to 3dB, or reduced DC power by 50% in backoff at 28 GHz. Healing 4-1 VSWR load mismatch for RF and DC power improvement was verified, and healing after laser induced transistor failure increased RF power up to 4.8dB.

Keywords

CMOS analogue integrated circuits; actuators; application specific integrated circuits; fault tolerance; field effect MIMIC; millimetre wave amplifiers; sensors; ASIC; DC power reduction; RF power improvement; VSWR load mismatch; frequency 28 GHz; fully-integrated self-healing mm-wave power amplifier; integrated digital algorithm; laser induced transistor failure; on-chip actuators; on-chip sensors; process variation; Actuators; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Radio frequency; Sensors; System-on-a-chip; Transistors; Actuators; CMOS Integrated Circuits; Digital Control; Power Amplifiers; Power Generation; Sensors; Thermal Sensors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC), 2012 IEEE

Conference_Location

Montreal, QC

ISSN

1529-2517

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0413-9

Electronic_ISBN

1529-2517

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.2012.6242268

Filename

6242268