A 160 GHz High Output Power and High Efficiency Power Amplifier in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS Technology

In this paper, a compact sub-terahertz low loss power combiner is proposed to realize optimal output matching and power combining, simultaneously. With the proposed technique, a 160 GHz 4-way power amplifier (PA) in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology is achieved, which exhibits a maximum power gain of 24 dB and 3-dB bandwidth of 20 GHz. Moreover, the PA achieves a saturated output power of 18 dBm and power-added efficiency (PAE) of 9.4% at 160 GHz, where the loss of pads, input and output feed lines are all included. To the best of our knowledge, it achieves the highest efficiency among the previously reported SiGe PAs above 150 GHz. The chip area of the power amplifier is only 1.02 × 0.82 mm
²
.