A Highly Efficient 240-GHz Power Amplifier in 0.13- \mu m SiGe

• Published in: IEEE microwave and wireless technology letters (Print) Vol. 34; no. 1; pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Balaban, Kaan, Kaynak, Mehmet, Ulusoy, Ahmet Cagri
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.01.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Amplification; Baluns; Cascade; efficiency; Gain; gm-boosting; Inductance; Loss measurement; Maximum power; millimeter wave (mm-wave) integrated circuits (ICs); Power amplifiers; power amplifiers (PAs); Silicon germanides; Silicon germanium; silicon–germanium (SiGe); Wireless communication; WR3.4-band
• ISSN: 2771-957X; 2771-9588
• DOI: 10.1109/LMWT.2023.3328934

This letter presents the design and experimental characterization of a highly efficient WR3.4-band power amplifier (PA) using 0.13-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mu</tex-math> </inline-formula>m SiGe technology. The realized differential cascode PA demonstrates a high efficiency, owing to the gm-boosting technique which enables a relatively higher small-signal gain per stage. The proposed PA exhibits a saturated output power of 10.48 dBm with a maximum power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 5.46% at 240 GHz , which is a leading-edge performance among the reported silicon (Si)-based WR3.4-band PAs. The small-signal gain peaks at 24.1 dB and the PA has a 3-dB bandwidth of 21 GHz.