A 19.1-dBm fully-integrated 24 GHz power amplifier using 0.18-μm CMOS technology

Abstract

A 24 GHz, 19.1 dBm fully-integrated power amplifiers (PA) was designed and fabricated in the 0.18-mum deep n-well (DNW) CMOS technology. This power amplifier is a 2-stage design using cascode RF NMOS configuration and has a maximum measured output power of 19.1 dBm, an OP1dB of 13.3 dBm, a power added efficiency (PAE) of 15.6%, and a linear gain of 18.8 dB when VDD and DNW are both biased at 3.6 V. The chip size is only 0.56 times 0.58 mm2. To the authorpsilas knowledge, this PA demonstrates the highest output power of +19.1 dBm among the reported PAs above 15 GHz in CMOS processes.