Research On Power Amplifying Technology Of RF/Milimeter Wave Integrated Circuits

In recent years,mobile communication devices have been remarkably developed with the mature of the 4G wireless mobile communication technlogies.In the coming 5G era,wireless data rate will be greatly promoted,however,the spectrum under 6GHz has been very crowded.Therefore,researchers and industry are turning their attention on millimeter wave frequency,while at the same time,digging deeper at the lower frequency bands.Power Amplifiers(PAs)are essential to wireless transceiver ICs,for their performance would directly affect the wireless communication distance and quality.Currently,the PA market is dominated by GaAs process,but compared with CMOS technology,GaAs process has disadvantages of high cost and incompatability with digital process.This work concerns about PA design based on CMOS technology,in order to find an effective way to reduce cost and to increase integration level of mobile devices.Theoretical basis about CMOS PAs are introduced including linearity analysis,basic parameters and classificationof PAs.The opportunities and challenges of CMOS PAs are concerned.And some common approches are intrduced as well.Then,a 4G radio frequencyPA has been designed based on 180 nm CMOS process provided by different foundries.The PA works at 1.75 GHz,with off-chip output matching network to reduce loss and increase efficiency.By using Global Foundry 180 nm process,the PA can achieve 26.2dBm output power with 30% PAE.Further simulation has found that the performance of the PA can be improved with TSMC 180 nm and IBM 180 nm SOI processes.Finally,a PA module,which is applied in a 5G front end,has been designed with TSMC 65 nm CMOS technology.The PA works at 38 GHz and occupies a relatively small chip area.By integrating this PA with other modules,a transmitter Soc has been trulyrealized at last.