A 39-GHz Doherty-Like Power Amplifier with 22-dBm Output Power and 21% Power-Added Efficiency at 6-dB Power Back-Off

Lang Chen; Lisheng Chen; Depeng Sun; Yichuang Sun; Yulin Pan; Xi Zhu

doi:10.1109/JETCAS.2024.3351075

A 39-GHz Doherty-Like Power Amplifier with 22-dBm Output Power and 21% Power-Added Efficiency at 6-dB Power Back-Off

Lang Chen, Lisheng Chen, Depeng Sun, Yichuang Sun, Yulin Pan, Xi Zhu

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Abstract

The design of a Doherty-like power amplifier for millimetre-wave (mm-wave) applications is presented in this work. The designed power amplifier employs a novel symmetrical load-modulated balanced amplifier (S-LMBA) architecture. This design is advantageous in minimizing the undesired impedance interaction often encountered in the classic LMBA approach. Such interactions are typically due to the use of a non-50 Ω load at the isolation port of the output quadrature coupler. Moreover, magnitude and phase control networks are carefully designed to generate the specific magnitude and phase information for the designed S-LMBA. To demonstrate the proposed ideas, the S-LMBA is fabricated in a 45-nm CMOS SOI technology. At 39 GHz, a 22.1 dBm saturated output power (Psat) with a maximum power-added efficiency (PAE) of 25.7% is achieved. In addition, 1.68 times drain efficiency enhancement is obtained over an ideal Class-B operation, when the designed S-LMBA is operated at 6 dB power back-off. An average output power of 13.1 dBm with a PAE of 14.4% at an error vector magnitude (EVMrms) above -22.5 dB and adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) of -23 dBc is also achieved, when a 200 MHz single carrier 64-quadrature-amplitude-modulation (QAM) signal is used. Including all testing pads, the footprint of the designed S-LMBA is only 1.56 mm ².

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-12
Number of pages	12
Journal	IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems
Early online date	8 Jan 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/JETCAS.2024.3351075
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 8 Jan 2024

Keywords

Balanced amplifier (BA)
CMOS
Circuits and systems
Couplers
Doherty-like amplifier
ISO
Impedance
Power amplifiers
Power generation
SATCOM
Sun
load-modulated balanced amplifier
millimeter-wave technology
monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC)

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© 2024, IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This is the accepted manuscript version of a conference paper which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1109/JETCAS.2024.3351075
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title = "A 39-GHz Doherty-Like Power Amplifier with 22-dBm Output Power and 21% Power-Added Efficiency at 6-dB Power Back-Off",

abstract = "The design of a Doherty-like power amplifier for millimetre-wave (mm-wave) applications is presented in this work. The designed power amplifier employs a novel symmetrical load-modulated balanced amplifier (S-LMBA) architecture. This design is advantageous in minimizing the undesired impedance interaction often encountered in the classic LMBA approach. Such interactions are typically due to the use of a non-50 Ω load at the isolation port of the output quadrature coupler. Moreover, magnitude and phase control networks are carefully designed to generate the specific magnitude and phase information for the designed S-LMBA. To demonstrate the proposed ideas, the S-LMBA is fabricated in a 45-nm CMOS SOI technology. At 39 GHz, a 22.1 dBm saturated output power (Psat) with a maximum power-added efficiency (PAE) of 25.7% is achieved. In addition, 1.68 times drain efficiency enhancement is obtained over an ideal Class-B operation, when the designed S-LMBA is operated at 6 dB power back-off. An average output power of 13.1 dBm with a PAE of 14.4% at an error vector magnitude (EVMrms) above -22.5 dB and adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) of -23 dBc is also achieved, when a 200 MHz single carrier 64-quadrature-amplitude-modulation (QAM) signal is used. Including all testing pads, the footprint of the designed S-LMBA is only 1.56 mm 2.",

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N1 - © 2024, IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This is the accepted manuscript version of a conference paper which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1109/JETCAS.2024.3351075

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N2 - The design of a Doherty-like power amplifier for millimetre-wave (mm-wave) applications is presented in this work. The designed power amplifier employs a novel symmetrical load-modulated balanced amplifier (S-LMBA) architecture. This design is advantageous in minimizing the undesired impedance interaction often encountered in the classic LMBA approach. Such interactions are typically due to the use of a non-50 Ω load at the isolation port of the output quadrature coupler. Moreover, magnitude and phase control networks are carefully designed to generate the specific magnitude and phase information for the designed S-LMBA. To demonstrate the proposed ideas, the S-LMBA is fabricated in a 45-nm CMOS SOI technology. At 39 GHz, a 22.1 dBm saturated output power (Psat) with a maximum power-added efficiency (PAE) of 25.7% is achieved. In addition, 1.68 times drain efficiency enhancement is obtained over an ideal Class-B operation, when the designed S-LMBA is operated at 6 dB power back-off. An average output power of 13.1 dBm with a PAE of 14.4% at an error vector magnitude (EVMrms) above -22.5 dB and adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) of -23 dBc is also achieved, when a 200 MHz single carrier 64-quadrature-amplitude-modulation (QAM) signal is used. Including all testing pads, the footprint of the designed S-LMBA is only 1.56 mm 2.

AB - The design of a Doherty-like power amplifier for millimetre-wave (mm-wave) applications is presented in this work. The designed power amplifier employs a novel symmetrical load-modulated balanced amplifier (S-LMBA) architecture. This design is advantageous in minimizing the undesired impedance interaction often encountered in the classic LMBA approach. Such interactions are typically due to the use of a non-50 Ω load at the isolation port of the output quadrature coupler. Moreover, magnitude and phase control networks are carefully designed to generate the specific magnitude and phase information for the designed S-LMBA. To demonstrate the proposed ideas, the S-LMBA is fabricated in a 45-nm CMOS SOI technology. At 39 GHz, a 22.1 dBm saturated output power (Psat) with a maximum power-added efficiency (PAE) of 25.7% is achieved. In addition, 1.68 times drain efficiency enhancement is obtained over an ideal Class-B operation, when the designed S-LMBA is operated at 6 dB power back-off. An average output power of 13.1 dBm with a PAE of 14.4% at an error vector magnitude (EVMrms) above -22.5 dB and adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) of -23 dBc is also achieved, when a 200 MHz single carrier 64-quadrature-amplitude-modulation (QAM) signal is used. Including all testing pads, the footprint of the designed S-LMBA is only 1.56 mm 2.

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KW - Power amplifiers

KW - Power generation

KW - SATCOM

KW - Sun

KW - load-modulated balanced amplifier

KW - millimeter-wave technology

KW - monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC)

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DO - 10.1109/JETCAS.2024.3351075

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SN - 2156-3365

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JO - IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems

JF - IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems

ER -

A 39-GHz Doherty-Like Power Amplifier with 22-dBm Output Power and 21% Power-Added Efficiency at 6-dB Power Back-Off

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