Millimeter-Wave CMOS Power Amplifiers

The rapid growth of mobile data and the use of smart phones are making unprecedented challenges for wireless service providers to overcome a global bandwidth shortage. Millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) technology is widely considered as one of the key technologies that will continue to serve the consumer demand for increased wireless data capacity. Meanwhile, the advanced CMOS can now well operate in mm-Wave bands, permitting the integration of a full transceiver in a low-cost, high-yield technology. However, the design of mm-Wave transceivers in advanced CMOS still poses many challenges at device, circuit and architecture levels. In addition to generic difficulties, such as high-frequency operation and low active gain, mm-Wave designers must deal with issues like low breakdown voltage, high interconnect loss, unwanted mutual coupling, poor device matching, inaccurate PDK high-frequency models, strict design rules, long EM-simulation time, etc. At transmitter side, all these critical issues limit the output power and efficiency, prolong the design time and make it difficult to guarantee the success of tape-out.