An E-Band Compact Power Amplifier for Future Array-Based Backhaul Networks in 22nm FD-SOI

Abstract

This paper presents a compact high output power, linear power amplifier (PA) for array based small to medium range mm-Wave base stations. Transformer based matching and cascode architecture is used to achieve record level power density in 22nm FD-SOI. The PA achieves 17.8dB gain, 17.8dBm saturated output power (PSAT) with 17.3% power-added efficiency (PAE). Core area is as low as 0.052 x 0.38mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , making this PA an ideal candidate for large array systems. AMPM is less than 2.1 degrees at 1dB compression point (P1dB) at 76GHz and less than 3 degrees from 60GHz to 85GHz. To the authors' knowledge, this PA has the highest power density achieved in E-band CMOS PAs.