Low Voltage Class-E Power Amplifiers for DECT and Bluetooth in 130nm CMOS

This paper presents the design of two low- voltage differential class-E power amplifiers (PA) for DECT and Bluetooth fabricated in 130 nm CMOS. In order to minimize the on-chip losses and to achieve a high efficiency at low supply voltages, the PAs do not use on-chip output matching networks. At 1.5V supply voltage, the DECT PA delivers +26.4 dBm of output power with a drain efficiency (DE) and power-added efficiency (PAE) of 41% and 30%, respectively. The Bluetooth PA delivers +22.7 dBm at IV with a DE and PAE of 48% and 36%, respectively. A continuous long-term test of 100 hours proves the reliability of the design.