4.5 A 13.5dBm Fully Integrated 200-to-255GHz Power Amplifier with a 4-Way Power Combiner in SiGe:C BiCMOS

Abstract

In order to efficiently utilize the frequency band above 200GHz for radar and communication applications, enough transmitted output power is essential to overcome the elevated path loss. For silicon-based technologies, the available output power at this frequency range is limited. The enlarging of the transistor size and so the corresponding power handling leads to a reduced output impedance. This causes the impedance transformation ratio to increase allowing only for narrow-band designs. Power combining of multiple single power amplifiers (PAs) is a common approach to achieve high output power alleviating the need to enlarge the devices size [1]. In this paper, we present a fully integrated PA that combines the power of 4 differential PA units using a 4-way zero-degree combiner and a 4-way active splitter to feed the 4 PA units.