A Fully Integrated 5GHz Balanced SiGe HBT Power Amplifier Design

A 5GHz balanced fully integrated Power Amplifier (PA) on a single chip has been designed in a 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. An analysis show that the process featured by 60GHz characteristic frequency can largely improve power output performance, and the differential topology optimized linearity, power added efficiency (PAE) and large signal performance. At 5.5GHz frequency, with 3.3V voltage supply, the 3-stage PA exhibits an output ldB compression point (OPldB) of 18dBm, max output power of 22dBm and a PAE of 23% at OdBm input. The results show that the PA well meets the 802.11a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) standards. Overall chip area is 0.9×2.2 mm
²
.