A mm-wave class-E 1-bit power modulator

Author

Datta, Kanak ; Hashemi, Hossein

Author_Institution

Electr. Eng.-Electrophys., Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

15-17 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

A Q-band Class-E 1-bit power modulator is demonstrated in a 0.13/μm SiGe HBT BiCMOS process for high-speed digital polar transmitters at mm-waves. A double-stacked SiGe HBT `beyond BVceo´ switching Class-E architecture has been used to generate high power while maintaining high efficiency at mm-waves. Using a novel architecture of input switching in a Class-E architecture biased with negligible quiescent current, both high peak PAE under continuous wave operation as well as high average efficiency under OOK modulation are maintained. The fully integrated 46 GHz prototype demonstrates a measured saturated output power of 21.8 dBm with peak PAE ≈ 18.5% under static (continuous wave) operation as well as average power of 18 dBm under 1 Gbps OOK modulation with average PAE ≈ 10%.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; heterojunction bipolar transistors; millimetre wave bipolar transistors; modulators; HBT BiCMOS process; OOK modulation; SiGe; frequency 46 GHz; high speed digital polar transmitters; mm wave class E 1 bit power modulator; size 0.13 mum; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Modulation; Power generation; Silicon germanium; Switches; Transmitters; Class-E; Power Amplifier (PA); Q-band; millimeter-wave; modulator; silicon germanium (SiGe) HBT; transmitter;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), 2014 IEEE Proceedings of the

Conference_Location

San Jose, CA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CICC.2014.6946039

Filename

6946039