A High Power and High Linearity 16.5-25.5 GHz 0.18-μm BiCMOS Power Amplifier

A new wideband 0.18-μm SiGe BiCMOS power amplifier (PA) across 16.5-25.5 GHz is presented. The PA consists of a drive amplifier (DA), and two main amplifiers integrated through lumped-element Wilkinson power divider and combiner. The PA exploits the advantages of both HBT and NMOS characteristics in a cascode topology in addition to floating the NMOS body to achieve good gain, output power, power-aided efficiency (PAE), and linearity. The developed PA has relatively flat saturated output power (P
_sat
) of 18.5-20.8 dBm, output 1-dB compression point (OP1dB) of 15.1-18.1 dBm, 13.5-23% maximum PAE, and gain of 19.5 ± 1.5 dB across 16.5-25.5 GHz. At 24 GHz, the PA achieves P
_sat
, OP1dB, maximum PAE, and gain of 20.8 dBm, 18.1 dBm, 23%, and 20 dB, respectively.