A 28 GHz and 38 GHz High-Gain Dual-Band Power Amplifier for 5G Wireless Systems in 22 nm FD-SOI CMOS

This paper presents a high-gain, dual-band power amplifier for 5G wireless systems, which supports a simultaneous operation at 28 GHz and 38 GHz. The circuit is based on two transistor-stack-amplifier stages, and is implemented in a 22 nm FD-SOI technology. Dual-band matching networks based on transmission lines and capacitors were used to realize the dual-band characteristic. For a power consumption of 318 mW from 2.7 V voltage supply, the power amplifier provides a gain of 31.7 dB, saturated output power of 19.4 dBm, output power 1 dB compression point of 15.7 dBm, maximum power-added-efficiency of 26.4% at 28 GHz, while a gain of 29.2 dB, saturated output power of 19.2 dBm, output power 1 dB compression point of 15.2 dBm, maximum power-added-efficiency of 25.1% were measured at 38 GHz. The power amplifier shows a measured gain-bandwidth product of 272.3 GHz. The power amplifier compares well against previously reported designs by showing one of the highest measured gain and gain-bandwidth product while still having a competitive performance in the other figures of merit. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first power amplifier using dual-band matching technique to provide a dual-band operation at 5G millimeter-wave bands.