• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.63-75
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• 2015

The CMOS power amplifier (PA) is a promising solution for highly-integrated transmitters in a single chip. However, the implementation of PAs using the CMOS process is a major challenge because of the inferior characteristics of CMOS devices. This paper focuses on improvements to the efficiency and linearity of CMOS PAs for modern wireless communication systems incorporating high peak-to-average ratio signals. Additionally, an envelope tracking supply modulator is applied to the CMOS PA for further performance improvement. The first approach is enhancing the efficiency by waveform engineering. In the second approach, linearization using adaptive bias circuit and harmonic control for wideband signals is performed. In the third approach, a CMOS PA with dynamic auxiliary circuits is employed in an optimized envelope tracking (ET) operation. Using the proposed techniques, a fully integrated CMOS ET PA achieves competitive performance, suitable for employment in a real system.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2014

A differential-cascode CMOS power amplifier (PA) with a supply modulator for envelope tracking (ET) has been implemented by 0.18 ${\mu}m$ RF CMOS technology. The loss at the output is minimized by implementing the output transformer on a FR-4 printed circuit board (PCB). The CMOS PA utilizes the $2^{nd}$ harmonic short at the input to enhance the linearity. The measurement was done by the 10MHz bandwidth 16QAM 6.88 dB peak-to-average power ratio long-term evolution (LTE) signal at 1.85 GHz. The ET operation of the CMOS PA with the supply modulator enhances the power-added efficiency (PAE) by 2.5, to 10% over the stand-alone CMOS PA for the LTE signal. The ET PA achieves a PAE of 36.5% and an $ACLR_{E-UTRA}$ of -32.7 dBc at an average output power of 27 dBm.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.20-28
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• 2017

A fully integrated dual-band CMOS power amplifier (PA) is developed for 802.11n WLAN applications using wafer-level package (WLP) technology. This paper presents a detailed design for the optimal impedance of dual-band PA (2 GHz/5 GHz PA) output transformers with low loss, which is provided by using 2:2 and 2:1 output transformers for the 2 GHz PA and the 5 GHz PA, respectively. In addition, several design issues in the dual-band PA design using WLP technology are addressed, and a design method is proposed. All considerations for the design of dual-band WLP PA are fully reflected in the design procedure. The 2 GHz WLP CMOS PA produces a saturated power of 26.3 dBm with a peak power-added efficiency (PAE) of 32.9%. The 5 GHz WLP CMOS PA produces a saturated power of 24.7 dBm with a PAE of 22.2%. The PA is tested using an 802.11n signal, which satisfies the stringent error vector magnitude (EVM) and mask requirements. It achieved an EVM of -28 dB at an output power of 19.5 dBm with a PAE of 13.1% at 2.45 GHz and an EVM of -28 dB at an output power of 18.1 dBm with a PAE of 8.9% at 5.8 GHz.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.280-285
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• 2015

A fully integrated high-efficiency linear CMOS power amplifier (PA) is developed for 802.11n WLAN applications using the 65-nm standard CMOS technology. The transformer topology is investigated to obtain a high-efficiency and high-linearity performance. By adopting a 2:2 output transformer, an optimum impedance is provided to the PA core. Besides, a LC harmonic control block is added to reduce the AM-to-AM/AM-to-PM distortions. The CMOS PA produces a saturated power of 26.1 dBm with a peak power-added efficiency (PAE) of 38.2%. The PA is tested using an 802.11n signal, and it satisfies the stringent error vector magnitude (EVM) and mask requirements. It achieves -28-dB EVM at an output power of 18.6 dBm with a PAE of 14.7%.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.419-420
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• 2008

A power amplifier(PA) has been designed for 900 MHz-band applications. The PA consists of a single-ended CMOS amplifier which has $0.18{\mu}m{\times}64{\times}6$ gate width. The PA has been designed using $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process. At 900 MHz, the PA exhibit an output power of 20.8 dBm and a power-added efficiency(PAE) of 58.4 % with 22.2 dB power gain.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.32-37
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• 2007

A DMB CMOS power amplifier (PA) with high efficiency and linearity is present. For this work, a 0.13-um standard CMOS process is employed and all components of the proposed PA are fully integrated into one chop including output matching network and adaptive bias control circuit. To improve the efficiency and linearity simultaneously, an adaptive bias control circuit is adopted along with second harmonic termination circuit at the drain node. The PA is shown a $P_{1dB}$ of 16.64 dBm, power added efficiency (PAE) of 38.31 %, and power gain of 24.64 dB, respectively. The third-order intermodulation (IMD3) and the fifth-order intermodulation (IMD5) have been -24.122 dBc and -37.156 dBc, respectively.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.327-329
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• 2010

A fully integrated small form-factor HBT power amplifier (PA) was developed for UMTS Tx applications. For practical use, the PA was implemented with a well configured bottom dimension, and a CMOS control IC was added to enable/disable the HBT PA. By using helix-on-pad integrated passive device output matching, a chip-stacking technique in the assembly of the CMOS IC, and embedding of the bulky inductive lines in a multilayer substrate, the module size was greatly reduced to 2 mm ${\times}$ 2.2 mm. A stage-bypass technique was used to enhance the efficiency of the PA. The PA showed a low idle current of about 20 mA and a PAE of about15% at an output power of 16 dBm, while showing good linearity over the entire operating power range.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.885-891
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• 2012

This paper proposes a high-efficiency power amplifier (PA) with uneven bias. The proposed amplifier consists of a driver amplifier, power stages of the main amplifier with class AB bias, and an auxiliary amplifier with class C bias. Unlike other CMOS PAs, the amplifier adopts a current-mode transformer-based combiner to reduce the output stage loss and size. As a result, the amplifier can improve the efficiency and reduce the quiescent current. The fully integrated CMOS PA is implemented using the commercial Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company 0.18-${\mu}m$ RF-CMOS process with a supply voltage of 3.3 V. The measured gain, $P_{1dB}$, and efficiency at $P_{1dB}$ are 29 dB, 28.1 dBm, and 37.9%, respectively. When the PA is tested with 54 Mbps of an 802.11g WLAN orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signal, a 25-dB error vector magnitude compliant output power of 22 dBm and a 21.5% efficiency can be obtained.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.426-432
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• 2012

A fully-integrated low power K-band radar transceiver in 130 nm CMOS process is presented. It consists of a low-noise amplifier (LNA), a down-conversion mixer, a power amplifier (PA), and a frequency synthesizer with injection locked buffer for driving mixer and PA. The receiver front-end provides a conversion gain of 19 dB. The LNA achieves a power gain of 15 dB and noise figure of 5.4 dB, and the PA has an output power of 9 dBm. The phase noise of VCO is -90 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset. The total dc power dissipation of the transceiver is 142 mW and the size of the chip is only $1.2{\times}1.4mm^2$.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.214-223
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• 2014

A fully-integrated penta-band reconfigurable power amplifier (PA) is developed for handset Tx applications. The output structure of the proposed PA is composed of the fixed output matching network, power and frequency reconfigurable networks, and post-PA distribution switches. In this work, a new reconfiguration technique is proposed for a specific band requiring power and frequency reconfiguration simultaneously. The design parameters for the proposed reconfiguration are newly derived and applied to the PA. To reduce the module size, the switches of reconfigurable output networks and post-PA switches are integrated into a single IC using a $0.18{\mu}m$ silicon-on-insulator CMOS process, and a compact size of $5mm{\times}5mm$ is thus achieved. The fabricated W-CDMA PA module shows adjacent channel leakage ratios better than -39 dBc up to the rated linear power and power-added efficiencies of higher than around 38% at the maximum linear output power over all the bands. Efficiency degradation is limited to 2.5% to 3% compared to the single-band reference PA.