scholarly journals K-Band Hetero-Stacked Differential Cascode Power Amplifier with High Psat and Efficiency in 65 nm LP CMOS Technology

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 890
Author(s):  
Kyu-Jin Choi ◽  
Jae-Hyun Park ◽  
Seong-Kyun Kim ◽  
Byung-Sung Kim

A K-band complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) differential cascode power amplifier is designed with the thin-oxide field effect transistor (FET) common source (CS) stage and thick-oxide FET common gate (CG) stage. Use of the thick-oxide CG stage affords the high supply voltage to 3.7 V and enables the high output power. Additionally, simple analysis shows that the gain degradation due to the low cut-off frequency of the thick-oxide CG FET can be compensated by the high output resistance of the thick-oxide FET if the inter-stage node is neutralized. The measured results of the proposed power amplifier demonstrate the saturated output power of the 23.3 dBm with the 31.3% peak power added efficiency (PAE) at 24 GHz frequency. The chip is fabricated in 65-nm low power (LP) CMOS technology and the chip size including all pads is 700 μm × 630 μm.

2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen An Tsou ◽  
Wen Shen Wuen ◽  
Tzu Yi Yang ◽  
Kuei Ann Wen

Analysis and compensation methodology of the AM-AM and AM-PM distortion of cascode class-E power amplifiers are presented. A physical-based model is proposed to illustrate that the nonlinear capacitance and transconductance cause the AM-AM and AM-PM distortion when modulating the supply voltage of the PA. A novel methodology that can reduce the distortion is also proposed. By degenerating common-gate transistor into a resistor, the constant equivalent impedance is obtained so that the AM-AM and AM-PM distortion is compensated. An experimental prototype of 2.6 GHz cascode class-E power amplifier with the AM-AM and AM-PM compensation has been integrated in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology, occupies a total die area of 1.6 mm2. It achieves a drain efficiency of 17.8% and a power-added efficiency of 16.6% while delivering 12 dBm of linear output power and drawing 31 mA from a 1.8 V supply. Finally, a co-simulation result demonstrated that, when the distortion of the PA has been compensated, the EVM is improved from −17 dB to −19 dB with an IEEE802.11a-like signal source.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dixian Zhao ◽  
Ying He ◽  
Lianming Li ◽  
Dieter Joos ◽  
Wim Philibert ◽  
...  

A 52–61 GHz power amplifier (PA) is implemented in 65 nm bulk complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The proposed PA employs a transformer-based power combiner to sum the output power from two unit PAs. Each unit PA uses transformer-coupled two-stage differential cascode topology. The differential cascode PA is able to increase the output power and ensure stability. The transformer-based passives enable a compact layout with the PA core area of only 0.3 mm2. The PA achieves a peak power gain of 10.2 dB with 3-dB bandwidth of 9 GHz. The measured saturated output power is 14.8 dBm with a peak power-added efficiency (PAE) of 7.2%. The reverse isolation is smaller than −33 dB from 25 to 65 GHz. The PA consumes a quiescent current of 143 mA from a 1.6 V supply.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 9017
Author(s):  
Jinho Jeong ◽  
Yeongmin Jang ◽  
Jongyoun Kim ◽  
Sosu Kim ◽  
Wansik Kim

In this paper, a high-power amplifier integrated circuit (IC) in gallium-nitride (GaN) on silicon (Si) technology is presented at a W-band (75–110 GHz). In order to mitigate the losses caused by relatively high loss tangent of Si substrate compared to silicon carbide (SiC), low-impedance microstrip lines (20–30 Ω) are adopted in the impedance matching networks. They allow for the impedance transformation between 50 Ω and very low impedances of the wide-gate transistors used for high power generation. Each stage is matched to produce enough power to drive the next stage. A Lange coupler is employed to combine two three-stage common source amplifiers, providing high output power and good input/output return loss. The designed power amplifier IC was fabricated in the commercially available 60 nm GaN-on-Si high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) foundry. From on-wafer probe measurements, it exhibits the output power higher than 26.5 dBm and power added efficiency (PAE) higher than 8.5% from 88 to 93 GHz with a large-signal gain > 10.5 dB. Peak output power is measured to be 28.9 dBm with a PAE of 13.3% and a gain of 9.9 dB at 90 GHz, which corresponds to the power density of 1.94 W/mm. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this result belongs to the highest output power and power density among the reported power amplifier ICs in GaN-on-Si HEMT technologies operating at the W-band.


Electronics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taufiq Alif Kurniawan ◽  
Toshihiko Yoshimasu

This paper presents a 2.5-GHz low-voltage, high-efficiency CMOS power amplifier (PA) IC in 0.18-µm CMOS technology. The combination of a dual-switching transistor (DST) and a third harmonic tuning technique is proposed. The DST effectively improves the gain at the saturation power region when the additional gain extension of the secondary switching transistor compensates for the gain compression of the primary one. To achieve high-efficiency performance, the third harmonic tuning circuit is connected in parallel to the output load. Therefore, the flattened drain current and voltage waveforms are generated, which in turn reduce the overlapping and the dc power consumption significantly. In addition, a 0.5-V back-gate voltage is applied to the primary switching transistor to realize the low-voltage operation. At 1 V of supply voltage, the proposed PA has achieved a power added efficiency (PAE) of 34.5% and a saturated output power of 10.1 dBm.


Circuit World ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 243-248
Author(s):  
Min Liu ◽  
Panpan Xu ◽  
Jincan Zhang ◽  
Bo Liu ◽  
Liwen Zhang

Purpose Power amplifiers (PAs) play an important role in wireless communications because they dominate system performance. High-linearity broadband PAs are of great value for potential use in multi-band system implementation. The purpose of this paper is to present a cascode power amplifier architecture to achieve high power and high efficiency requirements for 4.2∼5.4 GHz applications. Design/methodology/approach A common emitter (CE) configuration with a stacked common base configuration of heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) is used to achieve high power. T-type matching network is used as input matching network. To increase the bandwidth, the output matching networks are implemented using the two L-networks. Findings By using the proposed method, the stacked PA demonstrates a maximum saturated output power of 26.2 dBm, a compact chip size of 1.17 × 0.59 mm2 and a maximum power-added efficiency of 46.3 per cent. The PA shows a wideband small signal gain with less than 3 dB variation over working frequency. The saturated output power of the proposed PA is higher than 25 dBm between 4.2 and 5.4 GHz. Originality/value The technology adopted for the design of the 4.2-to-5.4 GHz stacked PA is the 2-µm gallium arsenide HBT process. Based on the proposed method, a better power performance of 3 dB improvement can be achieved as compared with the conventional CE or common-source amplifier because of high output stacking impedance.


Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Jiwon Kim ◽  
Changhyun Lee ◽  
Jinho Yoo ◽  
Changkun Park

We present the possibility of a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) power amplifier (PA) using a driver stage composed of p-channel metal oxide semiconductor (PMOS) to enhance linearity. The PMOS driver stage is designed as a cascode structure to adapt the antiphase technique to the CMOS PA. By biasing the common-source transistor of the driver stage at the subthreshold region, we obtain a gm3 value with a positive sign to cancel out the negative gm3 of the power stage, thereby enhancing the linearity. We also investigate the effect of the bias of the cascode transistor of the driver stage on third-order intermodulation distortion and amplitude-to-phase distortion. Consequently, we show that the PMOS driver stage itself acts as a pre-distorter of the power stage. To verify the possibility of the PMOS driver stage and the proposed biasing method for the antiphase technique, we design a 2.42 GHz PA using a 180 nm RFCMOS process for wireless local area network applications. We obtain a measured maximum linear output power of 21.5 dBm with a 23.4% power-added efficiency and an error vector magnitude of 3.14%. We use an 802.11 n modulated signal with 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) (MCS7) at 65 Mb/s.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-477
Author(s):  
Changhyun Lee ◽  
Changkun Park

In this study, we propose a design methodology for a switching-mode RF CMOS power amplifier with an output transformer. For a given supply voltage, output power, and target efficiency, the initial values of the transistor size, output inductance, and capacitance can be sequentially determined during the design of the power amplifier. The breakdown voltage of the power transistor is considered in the design methodology. To prove the feasibility of the proposed design methodology, we provide the design example of a 2.4-GHz switching-mode CMOS power amplifier with 180-nm RF CMOS technology. From the measured results, the feasibility of the proposed design methodology is proved.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 28-37
Author(s):  
Muhammad Noaman Zahid ◽  
Jianliang Jiang ◽  
Heng Lu ◽  
Hengli Zhang

In Radio Frequency (RF) communication, a Power Amplifier (PA) is used to amplify the signal at the required power level with less utilization of Direct Current (DC) power. The main characteristic of class-E PA is sturdy nonlinearity due to the switching mode action. In this study, a modified design of class-E PA with balanced Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors (MOSFETs) and high output power for Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) application is presented. MOSFETs are adjusted to have high output performance of about 80% for RFID-based EAS system. A matching network is also proposed for accurate matching because there are differences in the behavior between RF waves and low frequency waves. The design of a matching network is a tradeoff among the complexity, adjustability, implementation, and bandwidth for the required output power and frequency. The implemented PA is capable of providing 44.8 dBm output power with Power-Added Efficiency (PAE) of 78.5% at 7.7 MHz to 8.7 MHz.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang-Hsi Wu ◽  
Hong-Cheng You ◽  
Shun-Zhao Huang

Abstract An architecture of 5.2/5.8-GHz dual-band on-off keying (DBOOK) modulated transmitter is designed in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology. The proposed DBOOK transmitter is used in the biosignal transmission system with high power efficiency and small area. To reduce power consumption and enhance output swing, two pairs of center-tapped transformers are used as both LC tank and source grounding choke for the designed voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). Switching capacitances are used to achieve dual band operations, and a complemented power combiner is used to merge the differential output power of VCO to a single-ended output. Besides, the linearizer circuits are used in the proposed power amplifier with wideband output matching to improve the linearity both at 5.2/5.8-GHz bands. The designed DBOOK transmitter is implemented by dividing it into two chips. One chip implements the dual-band switching VCO and power combiner, and the other chip implements a linear power amplifier including dual-band operation. The first chip drives an output power of 2.2mW with consuming power of 5.13 mW from 1.1 V supply voltage. With the chip size including pad of 0.61 × 0.91 m2, the measured data rate and transmission efficiency attained are 100 Mb/s and 51 pJ/bit, respectively. The second chip, for power enhanced mode, exhibits P1 dB of −9 dBm, IIP3 of 1 dBm, the output power 1 dB compression point of 12.42 dBm, OIP3 of about 21 dBm, maximum output power of 17.02/16.18 dBm, and power added efficiency of 17.13/16.95% for 5.2/ 5.8 GHz. The chip size including pads is 0:693 × 1:084mm2.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (08) ◽  
pp. 1450111 ◽  
Author(s):  
U. ESWARAN ◽  
H. RAMIAH ◽  
J. KANESAN ◽  
A. W. REZA

In this paper, a 1 mm × 1 mm fully integrated wideband dual-stage power amplifier (PA) for long-term evolution (LTE) band 1 (1920–1980 MHz) is presented. Fabricated in a 2 μm InGaP/GaAs hetero-junction bipolar transistor (HBT) process, the operating gain is observed to be 31.3 dB. The PA meets the minimum adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) requirement of -30 dBc for LTE with 20 MHz wide channel bandwidth up to an output power of 30 dBm with the aid of a novel dual stage linearizer. Biased at low quiescent current of less than 100 mA with a headroom consumption of 3.5 V, the power added efficiency (PAE) is observed to be 38.29% at 30 dBm. With this high linear output power, the stringent requirement of antenna path loss is nullified. PA serves to be the first reported work to achieve 30 dBm linear output power at supply voltage of 3.5 V.


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