Individual suppression of complex harmonics - a novel approach to design of highly linear large signal amplifiers

We report on the design of power efficient, highly linear current mode amplifiers using a novel semi-analytical linearization approach. The technique is illustrated by two variations of the design of a transconductor amplifier implemented in SiGe. The design process, with emphasis on the linearization procedure, is presented along with experimental results. The measured performance features large signal linearity of 78 dBc, linearization efficiency of 20 dBc and high robustness to process variations (the scatter of 90% of results is within ±1 dB). Although the procedure is demonstrated on a particular example, it is applicable to a wide class of current mode amplifiers.