Development of Highly Efficient 5GHz-band CMOS Class-E Power Amplifier Module

This paper presents the development of a high-efficient class-E power amplifier (PA) module for 5-GHz wireless transmitter applications using constant envelope modulation scheme in a 0.18-mu m CMOS technology. This PA was placed on the lead frame and molded in the packaging for transmitter application. In our design, bonding wires are optimized by using electro-magnetic simulation. And the coplanar waveguide structure was composed of bonding wires at the RF port. Furthermore, in order to reduce the chip size and metal loss, spiral inductors were replaced by bonding wire on chip. We fabricated this PA module and measured saturated output power and maximum power-added-efficiency (PAE) at 5GHz-band. The measured saturated output power is 17.6 dBm at 5.2GHz.