A fully integrated flip-chip SiGe BiCMOS power amplifier for 802.11ac applications

A fully integrated flip-chip SiGe BiCMOS power amplifier for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications in the 2 GHz band is presented. In a front-end module (FEM) configuration and under 802.11ac signal excitation, the PA delivers 29 dB small-signal gain and -30.4 dB dynamic error vector magnitude (EVM) at 20.6 dBm, at nominal operating conditions (3.3 V, 25 °C). The PA tightly controls detector voltage and corrects the dynamic EVM over supply voltage, temperature, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) burst length and duty cycle variations.