A V-Band Miniaturized Bidirectional Switchless PALNA in SiGe:C BiCMOS Technology

Abstract

This letter presents a V-band switchless bidirectional power amplifier-low noise amplifier (PALNA) in a SiGe:C 130-nm BiCMOS technology, featuring ft/fmax of 250/340 GHz. This bidirectional PALNA architecture avoids the use of lossy transmit-receive switches by introducing a proper matching network that insures a good isolation when the amplifier is OFF and satisfies the input-output matching requirements when the amplifier is on. On-wafer measurements show that the designed PALNA has a peak small-signal gain of 16.5 and 17 dB in the Tx mode and Rx mode, respectively, with a reverse isolation better than 40 dB while maintaining wideband performance over the desired band from 57 to 66 GHz. In the Rx mode, the simulated noise figure (NF) is 6.5 dB over the required band. Furthermore, a 1-dB compression point (OP1dB) of 11 dBm in the Tx mode and an input 1-dB compression point (IP1dB) of -20 dBm in the Rx mode have been achieved. The switchless PALNA occupies only 0.18 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> and consumes 130 and 36 mW in the Tx and Rx modes, respectively.