A 19.1-dBm fully-integrated 24 GHz power amplifier using 0.18-μm CMOS technology

A 24 GHz, 19.1 dBm fully-integrated power amplifiers (PA) was designed and fabricated in the 0.18-μm deep n-well (DNW) CMOS technology. This power amplifier is a 2-stage design using cascode RF NMOS configuration and has a maximum measured output power of 19.1 dBm, an OP1dB of 13.3 dBm, a power added efficiency (PAE) of 15.6%, and a linear gain of 18.8 dB when V
DD
and DNW are both biased at 3.6 V. The chip size is only 0.56 × 0.58 mm2. To the author’s knowledge, this PA demonstrates the highest output power of +19.1 dBm among the reported PAs above 15 GHz in CMOS processes.