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

20-23 Jan. 2013

Firstpage

79

Lastpage

81

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; millimetre wave field effect transistors; millimetre wave power amplifiers; silicon-on-insulator; CMOS PA; SOI CMOS; W band; frequency 18 GHz; frequency 88 GHz to 90 GHz; frequency 90 GHz; frequency 91 GHz; gain 8 dB; highly scaled CMOS transistors; power amplifier; series-connected FET; size 45 nm; stacked FET; stacking strategy; voltage 4.2 V; 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

Biomedical Wireless Technologies, Networks, and Sensing Systems (BioWireleSS), 2013 IEEE Topical Conference on

Conference_Location

Austin, TX

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2930-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/BioWireleSS.2013.6613681

Filename

6613681