Design analysis of advanced power amplifiers for 5G wireless applications: a survey

A power amplifier (PA) is the most essential and crucial block for effective wireless communication in radio frequency (RF) frontend. PAs are employed to amplify the input signal to the appropriate output power level while consuming less DC power and producing high efficiency. Furthermore, current PA designs in nano or micro scales complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology have inherent limitations, including the hot electron effect and oxide breakdown. According to the literature, the performance of the PA directly influences the efficiency of any transmitter. The main purpose of the article is to provide a comprehensive overview, analysis, and quantitative comparison of the most promising RF PA architectures that have previously reported. The key focus of reviewed articles is PAs that were implemented using scalable CMOS technology with adequate output power for portable wireless devices at 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical band and 5G frequency ranges. The presented comparative study may help future work on wireless RF devices.