Efficient Linear Millimeter-Wave Distributed Transceivers in CMOS SOI

Abstract

Two Kuto V-band distributed amplifiers (DAs) based on nMOS and nMOS/pMOS gain stages and a distributed transceiver front end (DTFE) are presented for ultra-wideband power and low-noise amplification in a 45-nm RF CMOS silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. Supply scaling of gain stages through high-pass filter sections achieves high efficiency while maintaining a broadband 50-Ω match. The nMOS DA has a gain of 13 dB over a 3-dB bandwidth of 10-82 GHz and a minimum noise figure (NF) of 5.3 dB. The measured peak output power is 17.2 dBm with a peak power-added efficiency (PAE) of 17.4% at 50 GHz. The hybrid DA allows higher operating voltage and distortion cancelation of scaled pMOS devices to an achieve output power of 17.5 dBm with PAE of 20.2% and low third-order intermodulation and amplitude-phase nonlinearities. The DTFE utilizes time-domain duplexing to drive a shared antenna port for transmit (TX) and receive (RX) modes. It achieves TX gain of 11.7 dB from 12-76 GHz with peak output power of 17 dBm and PAE of 14.2%. RX gain is 9 dB from 11-77 GHz with a minimum NF of 6.2 dB. The 5-GHz wideband 16-QAM is demonstrated in the amplifier circuits for data rates exceeding 20 Gb/s.