A 20 dBm Q-band SiGe Class-E power amplifier with 31% peak PAE

Author

Datta, Kunal ; Roderick, Jonathan ; Hashemi, Hossein

Author_Institution

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

fYear

2012

fDate

9-12 Sept. 2012

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

A Q-band two-stage Class-E power amplifier is designed and fabricated in a 0.13 μm SiGe HBT BiCMOS process. A mm-wave Class-E architecture considering the effect of various interconnect parasitics is adopted to achieve high power efficiency. Proper input and output networks have been designed to enable efficient switching of the HBT at large voltage swings without causing unwanted impact ionization-induced negative base current and instability. The measured performance of the fabricated chip show 20.2 dBm maximum output power, 31.5% peak power added efficiency, and 10.5 dB power gain across 4 GHz centered around 45 GHz for a supply voltage of 2.5 V. The total chip area including the pads is 0.74 mm × 1.7 mm.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; heterojunction bipolar transistors; millimetre wave power amplifiers; HBT BiCMOS process; PAE; Q-band two-stage class-E power amplifier; SiGe; fabricated chip; frequency 4 GHz; frequency 45 GHz; gain 10.5 dB; high power efficiency; interconnect parasitics; maximum output power; mm-wave class-E architecture; peak power added efficiency; size 0.13 mum; voltage 2.5 V; voltage swing; Capacitance; Gain; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Power generation; Semiconductor device measurement; Silicon germanium; Switches; Class-E; Power Amplifier (PA); Q-band; millimeter-wave; silicon germanium (SiGe) HBT;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), 2012 IEEE

Conference_Location

San Jose, CA

ISSN

0886-5930

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-1555-5

Electronic_ISBN

0886-5930

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CICC.2012.6330563

Filename

6330563