A Ka-band Miniaturized Differential Stacked Power Amplifier with High Output Power and High PAE in 65-nm CMOS Technology

For 5G millimeter wave, a miniaturized Ka-band differential power amplifier with high efficiency and high output power based on 65nm CMOS technology is developed. For the input, output and stage matching of PA, the transformer matching network is used to reduce the size of PA to 0.6mm×0.32mm. The power amplifier adopts a two-stage differential structure and the power amplifier stage adopts a three-layer transistor stack structure to achieve high output power (Pout). The two-stage stacked power amplifier has a saturated output power of 20.6dBm, a peak gain of 22.3dB, a 3dB bandwidth of 32-42.5GHz, a 1dB output compression point of 18.5dBm, and a peak power additional efficiency (PAE) of 29.8%.