A 60GHz CMOS power amplifier with fully symmetrical distributed active transformer

High performance millimeter-wave (mm-wave) power amplifiers are needed because people pay more attention to the applications in mm-wave band now. A 60GHz power amplifier with a fully symmetrical distributed active transformer (DAT) is presented in this paper. The input ports of the fully symmetrical DAT have the same impedance, which enhance the performance of the power amplifier. The power amplifier using the fully symmetrical DAT is fabricated by standard 90nm CMOS technology. The power amplifier has a 21 dBm saturated output power and occupies an area of 0.675 mm2. The measured S21 is 16.8 dB. S11 and S22 are better than -13dB from 55 GHz to 65 GHz. The 3dB bandwidth is extended from 54 GHz to 65 GHz. Peak PAE of the power amplifier is 13%.