Load-pull measurement of SiGe:C HBT in BiCMOS 55 nm featuring 11 dBm of output power at 185 GHz

In this paper, we report high power performances at 185 GHz on single ended heterojunction bipolar transistors in the BiCMOS055 technology. Three device sizes were designed and characterized up to their saturation region. This was possible thanks to a power setup which offers an available input power up to 13.9 dBm at 185 GHz. An innovative integrated tuner was also designed with each transistor to vary the load at the on-wafer output DUT plane. The output power, power gain and power added efficiency are finally extracted under different load conditions. An output power of 11.3 dBm ± 0.5 dB is reached for the larger effective emitter area that is 1.112μm
²
.