A Compact Ku-Band SiGe Power Amplifier MMIC With On-Chip Active Biasing

A Ku-band power amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) with an output power density of 726 mW/mm
²
is demonstrated using 0.25 ¿m SiGe BiCMOS technology. No inductor matching scheme is applied to minimize the MMIC size, but an active biasing topology is used to enhance the power-added efficiency (PAE) and linearity of the MMIC. The fabricated one-stage cascode power amplifier MMIC, including input/output matching and biasing circuits, has a compact size of 0.384 mm
²
(0.6 mm × 0.64 mm), and exhibits a saturated output power (Psat) of 24.45 dBm and a PAE of 29.1 % at 14 GHz.