A 1.8GHz linear CMOS power amplifier with supply-path switching scheme for WCDMA/LTE applications

Low-cost CMOS PAs for mobile terminals have been a focus of attention in recent years. Self-contained, linear CMOS PAs are particularly attractive for smooth replacement of conventional compound semiconductor PA products. The main challenge concerning the linear CMOS PAs is to improve their power ef...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2013 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers pp. 90 - 91
Main Authors Onizuka, K., Saigusa, S., Otaka, S.
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.02.2013
Subjects
CMOS integrated circuits
Modulation
Multiaccess communication
Power amplifiers
Power generation
Radio frequency
Spread spectrum communication
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Summary:Low-cost CMOS PAs for mobile terminals have been a focus of attention in recent years. Self-contained, linear CMOS PAs are particularly attractive for smooth replacement of conventional compound semiconductor PA products. The main challenge concerning the linear CMOS PAs is to improve their power efficiency. Doherty PAs improve the average power efficiency by means of backoff efficiency boosting; however, their applicable carrier frequency range is narrow owing to the high-order output network. Supply modulation is another technique to improve the PA back-off efficiency. Although hybrid modulators have been studied for CMOS polar transmitters [1,2], none of them have satisfied full specs of modulation bandwidth and the output power for 4G cellular applications. The area overhead is also unacceptable for application to a self-contained linear PA. A class-G supply modulator relaxes the limitations by receiving external, discrete levels of supply voltages [3]. However, it still requires a costly extra DC-DC converter for multilevel supply voltages.
ISBN:9781467345156
1467345156
ISSN:0193-6530
2376-8606
DOI:10.1109/ISSCC.2013.6487650