Design and Performance of Power Amplifier Integration with BAW Filter on a Silicon-Ceramic Composite and Standard Epoxy/Glass Substrate

In radio frequency (RF) integrated circuits for LTE transmitters (Tx), the consideration of the thermal and nonlinear coupling between the Power Amplifier (PA) and adjacent RF filters realized by Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) technology is crucial for reliability and requires special attention. A co-design of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) PA, BAW Tx filter with optimum matching network is created on two substrate technologies. One design utilizes a novel silicon-ceramic (SiCer) platform which combines a stack of low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) layers with a thin silicon wafer in a single composite substrate and the second design uses standard woven glass/epoxy substrate technology. The linear performance of the different substrate technologies are compared with the same layout design. The BAW filter is based on Solidly Mounted Resonators (SMR) electrically coupled in a ladder type topology.