A Ku-Band Power Amplifier in 22nm FDSOI

This paper presents the design of an 18 GHz power amplifier (PA) in GlobalFoundries’ 22 nm fully-depleted silicon on insulator (FD-SOI) technology. The PA features a single-ended cascode core design with a ${P}_{sat}$ of 17 dBm and maximum PAE of 45%. The whole PA, including pads and ESD protection, occupies only 0.23 mm$^{2}$ and can be used as a baseline for more complex power-combined designs. Additionally, for the core design the performance of a common source, a cascode and a three-stack core are compared.