Millimeter-wave power amplifiers in 45nm CMOS SOI technology

A fully-integrated mm-wave power amplifier (PA) with 50Ω input and output matching is designed in IBM 45nm SOI technology. The circuit utilizes electrically isolated CMOS SOI transistors in a stack to enhance the overall breakdown voltages and output impedance. The power amplifier demonstrates a power gain of 14.4 dB with a 3dB bandwidth of 27 GHz to 39 GHz and achieves a saturated output power of 22.4dBm and with a peak power-added efficiency (PAE) of 33%. This work demonstrates the proposed PA topology designed in deep scaled CMOS SOI technology is capable of delivering high-power at mm-wave frequencies.