Fully integrated pseudo differential K-band power amplifier in 0.13um standard CMOS

Abstract

A K-band power amplifier (PA) module with on-chip input and output matching network was fabricated in standard 130-nm CMOS process with 1.5-V supply voltage. The fully integrated PA module consists of 2-stage pseudo-differential cascode configuration PA and on-chip stacked balun based on transformer. At 26GHz, the PA achieved 18.6-dB small-signal gain, 12.2-dBm saturated output power and 22.4% power added efficiency (PAE). The chip occupies an area of 0.88 × 0.62mm2, including all the dc and RF pads.