A Millimeter-Wave CMOS Power Amplifier Design Using High-Q Slow-Wave Transmission Lines

A three-stage 60-GHz power amplifier (PA) has been implemented in a 65 nm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology. High-quality-factor slow-wave coplanar waveguides (S-CPW) were used for input, output and inter-stage matching networks to improve the performance. Being biased for Class-A operation, the PA exhibits a measured power gain G of 18.3 dB at the working frequency, with a 3-dB bandwidth of 8.5 GHz. The measured 1-dB output compression point (OCP1dB) and the maximum saturated output power P-sat are 12 dBm and 14.2 dBm, respectively, with a DC power consumption of 156 mW under 1.2 V voltage supply. The measured peak power added efficiency PAE is 16%. The die area is 0.52 mm(2) (875 3 600 mu m(2)) including all the pads, whereas the effective area is only 0.24 mm(2). In addition, the performance improvement of the PA in terms of G, OCP1dB, P-sat, PAE and the figure of merit using S-CPW instead of thin film microstrip have been demonstrated. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.