A 26-42 GHz Broadband, Back-off Efficient and Vswr Tolerant CMOS Power Amplifier Architecture for 5G Applications

Chandrakanth R. Chappidi, Kaushik Sengupta

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

43 Scopus citations

Abstract

Future mm-Wave transmitter front-ends will need to operate in an electromagnetically complex environment that are resistant to near-field antenna perturbations (VSWR events) while operating across multiple mmWave frequency bands (28/37/39/42 GHz) and with high efficiency and linearity with spectrally efficient modulation. This is particularly difficult since these parameters (bandwidth, linearity, efficiency, and VSWR tolerance) trade off strongly with each other in a power amplifier (PA). In this paper, we present a PA architecture that exploits mutual load pulling through a multi-port network in a nonlinear fashion to achieve VSWR tolerance while demonstrating Doherty-like operation across 26-42 GHz. The PA designed in 65-nm bulk CMOS generates P-sat \gt 19 dBm with PAE -peak \gt 20% across all bands and achieves up to 3.35x and 4.84x enhancement in PAE at back-off power levels of 6 and 9.6 dB over class-A operation. In addition, the PA demonstrates strong tolerance to VSWR events with only 2 dB degradation over a VSWR 4:1 load circle and supports 64QAM OFDM modulation with 8 Gbps across 28-40GHz.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2019 Symposium on VLSI Circuits, VLSI Circuits 2019 - Digest of Technical Papers
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
PagesC22-C23
ISBN (Electronic)9784863487185
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2019
Event33rd Symposium on VLSI Circuits, VLSI Circuits 2019 - Kyoto, Japan
Duration: Jun 9 2019Jun 14 2019

Publication series

NameIEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits, Digest of Technical Papers
Volume2019-June

Conference

Conference33rd Symposium on VLSI Circuits, VLSI Circuits 2019
Country/TerritoryJapan
CityKyoto
Period6/9/196/14/19

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Keywords

  • 5G
  • Doherty
  • Power amplifier
  • Power combining
  • backoff
  • broadband
  • loadpull
  • millimeter-Wave

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