A 60 GHz SiGe-HBT Power Amplifier With 20% PAE at 15 dBm Output Power

Author

Do, Van-Hoang ; Subramanian, Viswanathan ; Keusgen, Wilhelm ; Boeck, Georg

Author_Institution

Design Center of TES Electron. Solutions GmbH, Berlin

Volume

18

Issue

3

fYear

2008

fDate

3/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

209

Lastpage

211

Abstract

A monolithic power amplifier (PA) operating in the 60 GHz band is presented. The circuit has been designed utilizing an advanced 0.25 SiGe-heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology, featuring npn transistors with and . A two-stage cascode architecture has been chosen for the implementation. Design techniques and optimization procedure are explained in detail. Measurements show a small signal gain of 18.8 dB and an output power of 14.5 dBm under 1 dB gain compression at 61 GHz. At this frequency, the saturated output power is 15.5 dBm and the peak power added efficiency (PAE) is 19.7%. To our knowledge, this is the highest PAE reported so far for a monolithic 61 GHz PA in SiGe-HBT technology.

Keywords

MMIC power amplifiers; germanium compounds; heterojunction bipolar transistors; monolithic integrated circuits; silicon compounds; HBT power amplifier; SiGe; frequency 60 GHz; frequency 61 GHz; heterojunction bipolar transistor; monolithic power amplifier; monolithic technology; power added efficiency; two-stage cascode architecture; 60 GHz; Millimeter wave; SiGe-heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology; monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC); power amplifier (PA);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2008.916816

Filename

4459074