A W-Band Power Amplifier Utilizing a Miniaturized Marchand Balun Combiner

Abstract

A miniaturized Marchand balun combiner is proposed for a W-band power amplifier (PA). The proposed combiner reduces the electrical length of the transmission lines (transmission line) from about 80 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> to 30 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">°</sup> , when compared with a conventional Marchand balun combiner. Implemented in a 1-V 65-nm CMOS process, the presented PA achieves a measured saturated output power of 11.9 dBm and a peak power-added efficiency of 9.0% at 87 GHz. The total chip area (with pads) is 0.77×0.48 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , where the size of the balun combiner is only 0.36×0.13 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> .