A dual band CMOS power amplifier for an S/X band high resolution radar system

This paper presents a dual band CMOS power amplifier (PA) for an S/X band high resolution radar system. Reconfigurable band-switchable matching networks and a dual band Wilkinson power combiner (impedance transformer) are used for an output matching network. The PA is fabricated using a UMC 0.13 μm CMOS process. It provides a saturated output power of 24.8 dBm and 25.3 dBm with the power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 27.2 % and 36.4 % at 8.4 GHz and 3.0 GHz, respectively. The 3-dB bandwidth is 2.5 GHz (7.4-9.9 GHz) and 2.3 GHz (2.7-5.0 GHz). This amplifier achieves a fractional bandwidth of 29% and 60 % at each band, and shows suitable performance for use in a high resolution radar system.