24.7 A 15dBm 12.8%-PAE Compact D-Band Power Amplifier with Two-Way Power Combining in 16nm FinFET CMOS

Abstract

The drive for higher data-rates has led to the allocation of the spectrum above 100GHz for D-band communication. A high level of integration in a nm-CMOS technology is necessary to keep the cost low and allow for efficient high-speed baseband and DSP circuits. However, the transition from a planar 28nm to a digital FinFET technology, such as 16nm FinFET, poses extra design challenges for mmwave power amplifiers. A solution to these design challenges is proposed in this work and resulted in aD-band 16nm FinFET CMOS power amplifier with a peak gain of 25.6dB, P <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">sat</sub> of 15dBm, and PAE <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">max</sub> of 12.8% for an area of only 0.062mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> .