A Compact SiGe Stacked Common-Base Dual-Band PA With 20/18.8 dBm P sat at 36/64 GHz Supporting Concurrent Modulation

Abstract

This work presents a compact, concurrent dual-band (36/64 GHz) linear power amplifier in 90 nm SiGe technology. To simultaneously overcome the gain and power limitation of conventional common-emitter (CE) silicon device at mm-wave, the stacked common-base (SCB) topology in SiGe is studied and utilized as PA cell. A highly efficient dual-band output network enables the optimum load-line matching for two widely separated frequencies. The proposed PA achieves 20/18.8 dBm <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P_{\mathrm {sat}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , 25/22.5% PAE at 36/64 GHz supporting two concurrent 32 QAM signals (total data rate of 9 Gb/s) with 9.5/7.8 dBm linear average power respectively, and concurrent PAE of 8.9%. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this prototype achieves highest dual frequency output power, PAE, and one of the first concurrent dual-band modulation among silicon-based mm-wave PAs, while still maintaining a highly compact footprint.