The signal swing at output pad of some radio-frequency (RF) power amplifiers (PAs) may be higher than the supply voltage. To protect the gigahertz large-swing power amplifier from electrostatic discharge (ESD) damage in nanoscale CMOS process, a large-swing-tolerant ESD protection circuit is presented in this paper. The proposed ESD protection circuit had been designed, fabricated, and characterized in a 65-nm CMOS process, where it can achieve low parasitic capacitance, large swing tolerance, high ESD robustness, and good latchup immunity. The proposed ESD protection circuit had been further applied to a 2.4-GHz PA to provide 3-kV human-body-model (HBM) ESD robustness without degrading the RF performances. Index Terms-Electrostatic discharge (ESD), power amplifier (PA), radio-frequency (RF), silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR).
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