A Performance Study of 22nm FDSOI CMOS for Wideband 5G Power Amplifier Applications

This paper presents a performance study of the 22nm FDSOI transistor through the design and simulation of a wideband two-stage power amplifier (PA). The PA design flow includes preliminary characterization and modeling of the core active device. The matching networks are designed through 3D electromagnetic (EM) simulation by using Ansys HFSS. The proposed PA is well matched to the 50–Ω system impedance and covers the 5G New Radio (NR) FR1 and FR2 frequency bands with a moderate small-signal gain of 16 ± 1.5 dB. The PA delivers 12 ± 0.2 dBm output power from 12 GHz to 32 GHz with a 3-dB bandwidth of 42 GHz. Moreover, the power-added efficiency (PAE) is maintained above 30% in the 5G FR2 bands and reaches a maximum value of 40%.