A 94-GHz SiGe Power Amplifier With 18.5 dB Power Gain and 14.4 dBm PSAT

A fully integrated two-stage differential power amplifier (PA) for 92-96-GHz applications in 130-nm silicon germanium (SiGe) technology is presented in this paper. A practical technique based on series capacitor at the base of the differential cascode structure is applied to enhance the stability and gain of the differential cascode cell. Transformer-based input and output matching networks play a role in impedance transformation and turn the differential input and output ends of the circuit into single-end. Compact metal-oxide-metal (MOM) capacitors are employed to implement inter-stage matching network. The proposed PA achieves a simulated power gain of 18.5 dB at 94 GHz and it's 3-dB gain bandwidth is 20 GHz from 81 GHz to 101 GHz. Moreover, the PA obtains a saturated output power of 14.4 dBm and maximum power-added efficiency (PAE) of 10.5% at 94 GHz. The area of the entire layout is 0.462 mm
²
and the core area is only 0.032 mm
²
.