A fully-integrated dual-mode tunable CMOS RF power amplifier with enhanced low-power efficiency

A dual-mode tunable CMOS power amplifier in a standard 0.18-μm CMOS process is presented. The tunable PA is designed for the IEEE 802.11g application with enhanced low-power efficiency. A reconfigurable matching network along with resizing of a PA core device is exploited corresponding to the operation modes: high-power and low-power modes. The tunable PA demonstrates measured output powers of 15.7 dBm with the PAE of 18.5% for high-power mode and 10 dBm with the PAE of 15.1% for low-power mode while satisfying EVM and spectrum mask requirements of the 802.11g specification. More than 130% efficiency-enhancement is achieved by incorporating the proposed low-power mode up to 10-dBm output power, which is a significant enhancement. To our knowledge, this is the first fully-integrated tunable PA with on-chip tunable matching network using a standard CMOS process.