2022/04/08 by Thomas Bucher, Thomas Bücher, Janusz Grzyb +6
Engineering · #Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit Design #Advanced Power Amplifier Design #Microwave Engineering and Waveguides
paper · pdf · doi:10.1109/jssc.2022.3162079
A broadband three-stage pseudo-differential SiGe-interconnection bipolar transistor (HBT) power amplifier (PA) for high-speed communication at around 300 GHz is presented. The amplifier is fabricated in an experimental 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology with an <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">ft/fmax </tex-math></inline-formula> of 470/650 GHz. The use of asymmetric coupled line transformers is proposed to facilitate broadband impedance transformation with device reactance compensation at all amplifier interfaces. The amplifier achieves a maximum small-signal power gain of 23.0 dB and a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P sat/ OP 1 dB </tex-math></inline-formula> up to 9.7/6.7 dBm, respectively. It shows a 3-dB bandwidth of 63 GHz (239–302 GHz) in small-signal operation and 94 GHz (223–317 GHz) when saturated. The amplifier consumes about 360 mW at a 3-V supply voltage yielding a peak power-added efficiency (PAE) of 1.95% at 260 GHz.