2023 Volume E106.C Issue 11 Pages 625-634
This paper presents a power amplifier (PA) designed as a part of a transceiver front-end fabricated in 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS. The PA shares its output antenna port with a low noise amplifier using a low-loss transmission/reception switch. The output matching network of the PA is designed to provide high output power, low AM-AM distortion, and uniform performance over frequencies in the range of 24.25-29.5GHz. Measurements of the front-end in TX mode demonstrate peak S21 of 30.3dB at 26.7GHz, S21 3-dB bandwidth of 9.8GHz from 22.2to 32.0GHz, and saturated output power (Psat) above 20dBm with power-added efficiency (PAE) above 22% from 24 to 30GHz. For a 64-QAM 400MHz bandwidth orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal, -25dBc error vector magnitude (EVM) is measured at an average output power of 12.3dBm and average PAE of 8.8%. The PA achieves a competitive ITRS FoM of 92.9.
