A 22.4 dBm Two-Way Wilkinson Power-Combined Q-Band SiGe Class-E Power Amplifier with 23% Peak PAE

A Q-band two-stage Class-E power amplifier is designed and fabricated in a 0.13 μm SiGe HBT BiCMOS process. A low-loss wide-band two-way Wilkinson power combiner is used for on-chip power dividing and combining at the input and output of the design. A mm-wave layout-aware class-E design procedure has been followed to enable efficient switching mode operation of the power amplifier in the Q-band. Stabilization networks and subharmonic terminations have been included to prevent the occurrence of unwanted impact ionization-induced negative base current and even/odd mode oscillation in the power-combined design. The fabricated chip shows a measured performance of 22.4 dBm output power at 23% peak power added efficiency (PAE), and 9 dB power gain across 4 GHz centered around 45 GHz for a supply voltage of 2.5 V. The total chip area including the pads is 1.1 mm × 2.2 mm.