High-Gain and Low-Power Power Amplifier for 24-GHz Automotive Radars

Abstract

This paper presents a high gain and low power 24-GHz power amplifier (PA) for the short range automotive radar. The proposed circuit is implemented using TSMC 0.13-µm RF CMOS (fT/fmax=120/140 GHz) technology, and it is powered by a 1.5-V supply. To improve power gain of the amplifier, it has a 2-stage cascode scheme. This circuit uses transmission lines to reduce total chip size instead of real bulky inductors for input and output impedance matching. The layout techniques for RF (radio frequency) are used to reduce parasitic capacitances at the band of 24 GHz. The proposed RF amplifier has low cost and low power dissipation since it is realized using all CMOS processes. The proposed circuit showed the smallest chip size of 0.12 mm 2 , the lowest power dissipation of 44.3 mW and the highest power gain of 24.04 dB as compared to recently reported research results.