IEICE Transactions on Electronics
Online ISSN : 1745-1353
Print ISSN : 0916-8524
Special Section on Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Technology
A 60 GHz High Gain Transformer-Coupled Differential Cascode Power Amplifier in 65 nm CMOS
Jenny Yi-Chun LIUMau-Chung Frank CHANG
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2011 Volume E94.C Issue 10 Pages 1508-1514

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Abstract

A fully differential high gain V-band three-stage transformer-coupled power amplifier (PA) is designed and implemented in 65 nm CMOS process. On-chip transformers which offer DC biasing for individual stages, extra stabilization mechanism, single-ended to differential conversion, and input/inter-stage/output matching are used to facilitate a compact amplifier design. The design and optimization methodologies of active and passive devices are presented. With a cascode configuration, the amplifier achieves a linear gain of 30.5dB centered at 63.5GHz and a -40dB reverse isolation under a 1V supply, which compares favorably to recent published V-band PAs. The amplifier delivers 9dBm and 13dBm saturation output power (Psat) under 1V and 1.5V supplies, respectively, and occupies a core chip area of 0.05mm2. The measurement results validate a high gain and area-efficient power amplifier design methodology in deep-scaled CMOS for applications in millimeter-wave communication.

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© 2011 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers
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