High-efficiency watt-level MASMOS® power amplifier for LTE applications

Abstract

This paper reports for the first time a power amplifier (PA) based on the recently proposed MASMOS® transistor. This PA complies with the long-term evolution (LTE) power level requirements while offering a high efficiency. The MASMOS® transistor, available in low-cost 180-nm standard CMOS process, provides a higher breakdown voltage compared to conventional CMOS transistors. Therefore, the MASMOS® transistor is of high interest as it is able to generate a Watt-level output power with high efficiency in the highest LTE-bands. A reconfigurable power cell, implementing resizable MASMOS® transistors and offering a discrete control of both the output power and the dc consumption is introduced. Based on this reconfigurable cell, a two-stage PA is designed. This PA exhibits a measured 30.2 dBm output power at 2.5 GHz with a gain and power-added efficiency (PAE) of 21.8 dB and 54% respectively.