A 60 GHz power amplifier (PA) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) with +28 dBm output power is designed in an enhancement-mode 0.15 μm GaAs pseudomorphic high-electron-mobility transistor (pHEMT) technology. A two-stage topology and a four-way power combining technique are adopted to achieve a high power gain, high output power, and high linearity. Transistor-level circuit and layout designs are developed, and the circuit performances are verified through three-dimensional electromagnetic simulations. The designed PA MMIC exhibits a saturated output power of +28.4 dBm, output-referred 1-dB gain compression point of +28 dBm, power gain of +8.1 dB, and power added efficiency of 29.3 %. S-parameter simulations show that the small-signal gain is +8.1 dB, and the operating bandwidth is between 55.7 and 63.1 GHz, with a fractional bandwidth of 12.3 %. The supply voltages are 4 V for the drain and 0.6 V for the gate. The positive-only supply voltages resulting from the enhancement-mode pHEMT simplify the supply voltage network compared with the conventional depletion-mode pHEMT design. The layout die size of the PA MMIC is 1.99×1.62 mm 2 , and the power density performance of 214 mW/mm 2 is satisfactory.
This paper presents a 52-to-57 GHz CMOS quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) with a novel I/Q phase tuning technique based on a body bias control method. The QVCO employs an in-phase injection-coupling (IPIC) network comprising four diode-connected FETs for the quadrature phase generation. The I/Q phase error is calibrated by controlling the body bias voltage offset of the QVCO’s four core FETs. This technique effectively covers a wide range of I/Q phase error between −13.4° and +10.7°. It also minimally induces the unwanted variations in the phase noise, current dissipation, and oscillation frequency, which were found to be only 0.4 dB, 0.07%, and 36 MHz, respectively. After the IPIC-QVCO, a phase-tunable two-stage LO buffer employing a 3-bit switched-capacitor bank was added for additional phase tuning, leading to the extension of the phase tuning range up to −22.7–+20.0°. The proposed QVCO is implemented in a 40 nm RF CMOS process. The measured results show that the QVCO covers a frequency band from 52.4 to 57.6 GHz while consuming 26.2 mW. The phase noise and the figure-of-merit of the QVCO are −91.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset and −172.4 dBc/Hz, respectively. We also realized a fully integrated 55 GHz quadrature RF transmitter employing the phase-tunable QVCO and LO generator. The effectiveness of the proposed phase-tunable LO generator was confirmed by verifying the image rejection ratio (IRR) calibration at the RF output.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.