A 1.6-2.6GHz 29dBm Injection-Locked Power Amplifier with 64% peak PAE in 65nm CMOS

In English This paper presents a wideband CMOS power
amplifier intended for cellular handset applications. The circuit
exploits injection locking to achieve a power gain of 20.5dB from
a single stage amplifier. The maximum output power of 29dBm,
with a peak drain- and power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 66%
and 64%, respectively, occurs at a center frequency of 2GHz
with a 3V supply. A cross-coupled cascode topology enables a
wideband PAE exceeding 50% from 1.6 to 2.6GHz. For output
power levels below 4dBm the circuit operates as a linear class
AB amplifier with a power consumption of 17mW from a 0.48V
supply. The power gain of 20.5dB is kept constant for all output
powers; with an AM-AM- and AM-PM-conversion of 0.2dB and
17deg, respectively, over the entire WCDMA dynamic range of
80dB. The circuit is implemented in a standard 65nm CMOS
process with a total chip area of 0.52x0.48mm2 including pads.