A 500-2500 MHz Fully Integrated CMOS Power Amplifier with Multilayer Series Inductors

Abstract

A broadband matching network used to provide a suitable load resistance for the MOSFET over a large frequency range is one of the keys to realize a broadband fully integrated CMOS power amplifier (PA). However, the broadband off-chip matching network will occupy large printed circuit board area and bring more parasitic effects. The broadband on-chip matching network suffers from large chip area. The paper presents a fully integrated matching network, which replaces the standard inductors (STIs) with the multilayer series inductors (MSIs), for expanding the bandwidth and reducing the chip size. The fully integrated matching network is applied in a broadband PA, which achieves a good performance in the measured 133% fractional bandwidth from 500 MHz to 2.5 GHz. The maximum power-added efficiency (PAE) achieves 42.5 % and the saturation output power reaches 24 dBm. The chip area is 0.4 mm² at TSMC 0.18 μm technology process. It draws 100 mA from 3.3 V supply voltage and the static power consumption is less than 0.3 W.