A 12 GHz to 46 GHz Fully Integrated SiGe Distributed Power Amplifier with 20.9 dBm Output Power and 18.3 dB Gain

This work presents a power amplifier (PA) operating from 12 GHz to 46 GHz implemented in a 130 nm- SiGe-BiCMOS technology. The circuit employs an improved distributed topology with stacked transistor gain cells and output termination with large resistance to simultaneously improve gain and output power. A transmission line is introduced to avoid the use of external bias-tee for the DC power supply. Measurements of the fabricated chips show a peak gain of 18.3 dB, a maximum saturated output power of 20.9dBm, a maximum 1-dB compressed output power of 19.2dBm and a peak power added efficiency of 14.5 %. To the best knowledge of the authors, the presented PA has the best combination of output power, power gain and power bandwidth among the reported broadband PAs in silicon based technologies.