A SiGe LTE power amplifier with capacitive tuning for size-reduction of biasing inductor

Author

Jinshu Zhao ; Wolf, Robert ; Ellinger, F.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Circuit Design & Network Theor., Tech. Univ. Dresden, Dresden, Germany

fYear

2013

fDate

24-27 June 2013

Firstpage

313

Lastpage

316

Abstract

This paper demonstrates a fully integrated power amplifier for long term evolution (LTE) applications. The power amplifier is adopting a tuning capacitor in parallel with the choke inductor, which reduces the DC power consumption of the inductor and decreases the chip size. The total power added efficiency (PAE) is enhanced as a result. The proposed power amplifier is manufactured using a 0.25 μm SiGe hetero-junction bipolar transistor (HBT) process. For a LTE signal with a centre frequency of 2.1 GHz, the PA delivers an output power of 21.3 dBm with the power added efficiency (PAE) of 21% and power gain of 19.5 dB at the 1 dB compression point. For the LTE downlink quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM64) signal at 2.11 GHz with 20 MHz channel bandwidth, the measured ACLR is below -30 dBc for the output power of 18 dBm with PAE above 15%. The error vector magnitude (EVM) specifications are met for LTE 20 MHz bandwidth QPSK modulation scheme, and complied with 1 dB power back-off for QAM16 signal and at 2 dB power back-off for QAM64 modulation scheme. The measurement results verify that the proposed method is promising for the application of the fully integrated PA.

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; Long Term Evolution; UHF power amplifiers; heterojunction bipolar transistors; inductors; quadrature amplitude modulation; quadrature phase shift keying; DC power consumption reduction; EVM specifications; HBT process; LTE downlink quadrature amplitude modulation signal; PA; QAM16 signal; QAM64 signal; QPSK modulation scheme; SiGe; bandwidth 20 MHz; biasing inductor; capacitive tuning; choke inductor; efficiency 21 percent; error vector magnitude specifications; frequency 2.1 GHz; frequency 2.11 GHz; fully integrated power amplifier; gain 19.5 dB; heterojunction bipolar transistor process; long term evolution applications; power added efficiency; size 0.25 mum; size-reduction; Capacitors; Frequency measurement; Inductors; Long Term Evolution; Power amplifiers; Power measurement; Tuning; Power amplifier (PA); adjacent channel leakage power ratio (ACLR); choke inductor; error vector magnitude (EVM); hetero-junction bipolar transistors (HBT); long term evolution (LTE); power added efficiency (PAE);

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Ph.D. Research in Microelectronics and Electronics (PRIME), 2013 9th Conference on

Conference_Location

Villach

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-4580-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PRIME.2013.6603168

Filename

6603168