A 22.4 dBm Two-Way Wilkinson Power-Combined Q-Band SiGe Class-E Power Amplifier with 23% 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

14-17 Oct. 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 low-loss wide-band two-way Wilkinson power combiner is used for on-chip power dividing and combining at the input and output of the design. A mm-wave layout-aware class-E design procedure has been followed to enable efficient switching mode operation of the power amplifier in the Q-band. Stabilization networks and subharmonic terminations have been included to prevent the occurrence of unwanted impact ionization-induced negative base current and even/odd mode oscillation in the power-combined design. The fabricated chip shows a measured performance of 22.4 dBm output power at 23% peak power added efficiency (PAE), and 9 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 1.1 mm × 2.2 mm.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; bipolar MIMIC; bipolar MMIC; heterojunction bipolar transistors; microwave power amplifiers; millimetre wave power amplifiers; power combiners; SiGe; SiGe HBT BiCMOS process; SiGe class-E power amplifier; gain 9 dB; low-loss wide-band two-way Wilkinson power combiner; mm-wave layout-aware class-E design; negative base current; on-chip power combining; on-chip power dividing; size 0.13 mum; stabilization networks; subharmonic terminations; two-way Wilkinson power-combined Q-band power amplifier; unwanted impact ionization; voltage 2.5 V; Gain; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Power combiners; Power generation; Power measurement; Semiconductor device measurement; Silicon germanium;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium (CSICS), 2012 IEEE

Conference_Location

La Jolla, CA

ISSN

1550-8781

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0928-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CSICS.2012.6340076

Filename

6340076