A 24-31GHz 28nm FD-SOI CMOS Balanced Power Amplifier Robust to 3:1 VSWR for 5G Application

This paper presents a broadband balanced power amplifier (PA) for 5G mm-wave applications. Thanks to its balanced architecture, the PA exhibits a great robustness to active voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR). The design of the power cells is focused on high efficiency while maintaining high linearity. The PA exhibits 20.5dBm P
sat
with 39% peak power added efficiency (PAE) at 26GHz. In the n257 and n258 5G New Radio (NR) FR2 bands (24.25 - 29.50GHz), PAE
rnax
and PAE
6dBPBO
of the PA remain above 30% and 14%, respectively. At 29 GHz, the PAE and
$P_{sat}$
drop by only 3% and 0.8 dBm, respectively, between the optimal case
$50\ \Omega$
and the worst case at 2:1 VSWR. The PA is implemented in a 28nm FD-SOI CMOS process and occupies 0.90mm
²
.