A fully integrated 60GHz distributed transformer power amplifier in bulky CMOS 45nm

This paper describes a fully integrated differential power amplifier (PA) operating at 60 GHz ISM band and implemented in 45nm CMOS technology. The PA is based on a distributed active transformer (DAT) topology which enables simultaneous power combining and realization of an efficient impedance matching. To cope with the asymmetric nature of DAT, resulting in common-mode and unequal differential voltage-swings at its input-ports, this paper presents two universal methods which do not impose any layout restrictions and layout adjustments. The realized PA achieves 13.2dBm output power at 1dB compression, a saturated output power of 16.3dBm, a PAE of 8.7% and 18.7dBm OIP3, while consuming 178mA at 1.8V.