SiGe HBTs for Power Amplifiers in Front-End of Radio Communication Systems

We provide a status and outlook of the Silicon Germanium (SiGe) Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor (HBT) for Power Amplifier (PA) applications in the front-end of a wireless LAN that operates below 8GHz and that in a millimeter-wave (mmWave) phased array system operating above 24 GHz. At GlobalFoundries, for addressing WiFi segment, we have four generations of a 350nm SiGe BiCMOS technology in production and the 5
^th
generation in development. Continuous improvements in power density, gain, and ruggedness are desired from these roadmap technologies to keep up with emerging WiFi standards. For mmWave handset and infrastructure applications, the use of phased array has reduced the peak PA power requirements thereby favoring silicon technologies. We discuss the opportunities for SiGe HBTs in improving Gain and PAE, particularly as frequencies scale towards D-band and above.