Premium
A high‐performance CMOS power amplifier for 60 GHz short‐range communication systems
Author(s) -
Chang JingNing,
Lin YoSheng
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
microwave and optical technology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1098-2760
pISSN - 0895-2477
DOI - 10.1002/mop.27522
Subject(s) - amplifier , electrical engineering , return loss , linear amplifier , rf power amplifier , power bandwidth , power added efficiency , direct coupled amplifier , cmos , cascade amplifier , power gain , power dividers and directional couplers , engineering , power (physics) , electronic engineering , physics , operational amplifier , antenna (radio) , quantum mechanics
A 60 GHz power amplifier for direct‐conversion transceiver using standard 90 nm CMOS technology is reported.The power amplifier comprises three cascaded common‐source stages with inductive load and inter‐stage matching. To increase the saturated output power ( P sat ) and power‐added efficiency (PAE), the output stage adopts a two‐way power dividing and combining architecture. Instead of the area‐consumed Wilkinson power divider and combiner, miniature low‐loss LC power divider and combiner are used. This in turn results in further P sat and PAE enhancement. Over the 57 ∼ 64 GHz frequency band of interest, the power amplifier consumes 44.4 mW and achieves power gain ( S 21 ) of 12.04 ± 1 dB, input‐port input return loss ( S 11 ) of −6 to −9.4 dB, output‐port input return loss ( S 22 ) of −10.4 to −26.4 dB, and reverse isolation (S 12 ) of −29.2 to −30.6 dB. At 60 GHz, the power amplifier achieves P sat of 11.4 mW and maximum PAE of 15.8%. To the authors' knowledge, this is the best PAE ever reported for a 60 GHz CMOS power amplifier. In addition, the measured output 1‐dB compression point (OP 1 dB ) is 6 dBm at 60 GHz. These results demonstrate that the proposed power amplifier architecture is very promising for 60‐GHz short‐range communication systems. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:1155–1160, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27522