A 13.5-dBm 200–255-GHz 4-Way Power Amplifier and Frequency Source in 130-nm BiCMOS

In this letter, a wideband power amplifier (PA) and a frequency source (FS) at 240 GHz are presented in 130-nm BiCMOS technology with f
_T
/f
_max
= 300/500 GHz. Two circuits are manufactured and measured. Circuit 1 is a three stage PA with a 4-way zero-degree power combiner (ZDC) and two cascaded 1-to-2 active power splitters. It achieves a gain of 15.5 dB across a linear 3-dB bandwidth of 55 GHz, saturated output power (P
_sat
) of 13.5 dBm, output 1-dB compression point (OP1dB) of 10.5 dBm and a power consumption of 740 mW, resulting in a drain efficiency (η
_d
) of 3% and a power added efficiency (PAE) at OP1dB of 1.47%. The presented PA achieves 7-times better PAE with 2-times better P
_sat
across a bandwidth that is 1.8-times better than the state-of-the-art. Circuit 2 is an FS consisting of a multiplier-by-8 chain driving the PA (circuit 1). The FS achieves a 3-dB bandwidth of 50 GHz with a total power consumption of 990 mW resulting in η
_d
of 2.3%, this is 2-times better η
_d
and 4-times better P
_sat
compared to literature.