A 60GHz CMOS Power Amplifier with Cascaded Asymmetric Distributed-Active-Transformer Achieving Watt-Level Peak Output Power with 20.8% PAE and Supporting 2Gsym/s 64-QAM Modulation

📋 论文概要

本文提出了一种级联非对称分布式有源变压器（DAT）结构，用于解决60GHz毫米波CMOS功率放大器中因绕组间电容导致的阻抗变换不对称问题，实现了瓦特级峰值输出功率。

💡 主要创新点

• 提出级联非对称分布式有源变压器（Cascaded Asymmetric DAT）结构，有效补偿高频下DAT各段之间的阻抗失配。
• 在60GHz CMOS工艺中首次实现基于DAT的瓦特级功率放大器，克服了毫米波频段DAT设计的挑战。

🏷 关键词

📄 原文摘要

Since its invention in early 2000s, Distributed Active Transformer (DAT) has been a popular power-combiner technique for high-power high-efficiency Power Amplifiers (PAs) in voltage-limited Silicon processes at GHz frequencies [1,2]. However, successful DAT implementations at high mm-wave frequencies still remain elusive. Substantial inter-winding capacitance causes asymmetry in impedance transformation among the DAT sections, resulting in mismatched and non-optimum loads for high-frequency mm-wave DAT PAs, including those using transformer-based DAT combiners [3]. Moreover, the DAT physical size at mmwave frequencies is comparable to a mm-wave signal wavelength, which leads to significant physical phase delays between DAT sections. As a result, the combined vectoral signal at the DAT output is substantially mismatched, causing appreciable degradation in the DAT output power and efficiency [4].

👥 作者与机构

Huy Thong Nguyen, Doohwan Jung, Hua Wang

Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA