Design of Ku-band SiGe-HBT power amplifier with through-silicon-via applying 3-D EM simulation

This paper presents a power amplifier (PA) for Ku-band T/R modules using 0.13-wm SiGe BiCMOS process technology with through-silicon-via (TSV). The proposed PA is composed of two cascode stages using high performance (HP) SiGe HBTs to achieve a high gain and a relatively high output power. The TSV is utilized to provide a low-resistance and low-inductance path to the ground. And the 3-D electro-magnetic (EM) simulation is applied to narrow the gap between the simulated and the measured results. The proposed PA achieves a small-signal gain of 27dB with a 3-dB bandwidth covering from 14.8GHz to 18.2GHz. The output 1dB compression point (OP1dB) and the peak power-added efficiency (PAE) are 21.4dBm and 16.7% at 15GHz respectively.