A 21-39.5 GHz Power Amplifier for 5G Wireless Systems in 22 nm FD-SOI CMOS

This paper presents a high-gain broadband power amplifier for 5G wireless systems, which provides a gain above 10 dB from 21 GHz to 39.5 GHz, and is implemented in a 22 nm FD-SOI technology. The circuit is based on two stacked amplifier stages which are connected with lumped-element matching networks. For a power consumption of 228 mW from a 2.4 V voltage supply, the amplifier provides 25 dB of peak gain, maximum saturated output power of 16.8 dBm, output power in 1 dB gain-compression of 13 dBm, and maximum power-added-efficiency of 19.8%. The power amplifier compares well against previously reported designs by showing the highest measured gain and gain-bandwidth product while still having comparable performance in the other figures of merit.