A 40-nm CMOS E-Band 4-Way Power Amplifier With Neutralized Bootstrapped Cascode Amplifier and Optimum Passive Circuits

This paper reports a fully integrated 40-nm CMOS power amplifier (PA) for E-band applications. A neutralized bootstrapped cascode amplifier (NBCA) topology is proposed to enhance the power gain and output power at millimeter wave (mm-Wave) frequencies while maintaining the stability. A broadband 4-way differential parallel-series power combiner is employed to further increase the output power. Besides, both interstage and input passive networks are optimized to improve the bandwidth and common-mode stability. Occupying 0.25 mm², the proposed PA achieves a measured output power of 22.6 dBm with 19.3% peak power-added efficiency (PAE_MAX). The 2-stage PA has a measured power gain of 25.3 dB.