A 24 GHz 90-nm CMOS-based power amplifier module with output power of 20 dBm

We have fabricated a 24 GHz power amplifier (PA) module in a standard 90-nm Si-CMOS process. The PA module consists of two 2-stage cascode configuration PA MMICs and an off-chip Wilkinson power divider and combiner. Each single PA MMIC has a gain of 22 dB with a P
_3dB
output power of 18.3 dBm at 24 GHz load-pull measurement. The fabricated PA module demonstrates state-of-the-art performance, including a saturation output power of 20.7 dBm with a linear gain of 20.3 dB at 24 GHz and a supply voltage of 2.4 V. We estimated its linearity to be an error vector magnitude (EVM) of 5% at an output power of 8 dBm for OFDM -16QAM signals.