Design Of A 0.7～2.6GHz Broadband CMOS Power Amplifier

In the past decade, with the development of wireless communication technology, an integrated multi-standard RF front-end which can cover different wireless communication standards is required in this information era. As an important component of RF transceiver, the power amplifier (PA) has strong effect on the overall performance of the communication system. Common structure of multi-mode PA includes broadband design and multi-band combination. The broadband PA can support multi-standard applications within one chip, which has benefits on reducing costs and improving scalability.The topic of this thesis is the research and design of broadband PA for multi-mode multi-band transceiver. Base on TSMC 0.18μm CMOS process, the proposed amplifier employs a two-stage linear amplifier structure. The broadband matching network is implemented with the technique of lossy network and multi-stage network with low Q factor. And the technique of gain compensation and negative feedback is used to design the broadband PA. The chip size of this PA is about 0.5mm2. In order to reduce the area, the output matching network is realized off the chip. According to the post-simulation results, the proposed PA achieves maximum output power of more than 23dBm in 0.7-2.6GHz. The output P1dB of the PA is larger than 20dBm. And the power added efficiency (PAE) at OP1dB is 19.3%～35.5% within the working frequency. The simulated power gain is larger than 23dB, and the S11is under-10dB.Measurement results show that the working frequency range of the broadband PA is 0.7-1.5GHz, with the maximum output power of 18.2-22.3dBm. The output P1dB during test is 16.6-21.4dBm, and the corresponding PAE is 7.7% ～23.4%. The power gain within the working frequency is larger than 16dB and the S11 is less than-13dB. According to the test results, the proposed PA can cover the frequency of more than one octave. The linearity and power gain of the PA is satisfactory within the working frequency. This PA applies to multi-standard wireless communication applications, and can be used in multi-mode multi-standard transceiver.