A linear 60 GHz 65 nm-CMOS power amplifier realization and characterization for OFDM signal

Sofiane Aloui (1) , Nicolas Delaunay (1, 2) , Eric Kerhervé (1) , Nathalie Deltimple (1) , Robert Plana (3) , Didier Belot (2)

1 IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système
2 ST-CROLLES - STMicroelectronics [Crolles]
3 LAAS - Laboratoire d'analyse et d'architecture des systèmes

A millimeter-wave Power Amplifier (PA) based on a 65nm CMOS technology from STMicroelec- tronics has been designed. The targeted feature is the unlicensed band around 60 GHz suitable for wireless per- sonal area network application (WPAN). To optimize the linearity, the PA is designed under class A biasing to have an output compression point (OCP 1 ) close to its saturated Power (P sat ). S-parameters and large signal measurement results are demonstrated and compared with electromag- netic simulations. The PA offers a P sat of 8.3 dBm, an OCP 1 of 6 dBm and a gain of 6.7 dB. The die area is 0.29 mm 2 with pads. Considering those results, one-tone simulations are not sufficient to characterize the linearity performances of the PA in its real conditions of use. Consequently, two-tone simulations are firstly performed. After, linearity figures of merit (FoM) are discussed applying an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulated signal. The PA offers an adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) of 15 dB and an error vector magnitude (EVM) of 20% at PA compression operating mode.

Domaines: Electronique

Sofiane Aloui, Nicolas Delaunay, Eric Kerhervé, Nathalie Deltimple, Robert Plana, et al.. A linear 60 GHz 65 nm-CMOS power amplifier realization and characterization for OFDM signal. Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, 2011, 70 (2), pp.203-211. ⟨10.1007/s10470-011-9772-9⟩. ⟨hal-00657969⟩