A compact, fully differential D-band CMOS amplifier in 65nm CMOS

Abstract

A fully differential 144GHz CMOS amplifier has been demonstrated in 65nm CMOS. It validates a maximum 20dB power gain and has positive gain over 38GHz frequency range from 126GHz to 164GHz. With stacking circuit architecture, the amplifier can tolerate up to 2V supply without reliability concern. It also delivers over 5.7dBm saturated output power with PldB of 5dBm under a 2V supply. The amplifier features a 3-stage common-source cascode architecture with on-chip interstage matching. The chip occupies 0.05 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> area and draws 39mA and 51mA from 1.4V and 2V supplies respectively. To our best knowledge, this amplifier achieves the highest power gain for CMOS amplifier beyond 100GHz and paves the way for D-band radar and passive imaging system applications.