A Wimedia Compliant CMOS RF Power Amplifier for Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Transmitter

A WiMedia compliant CMOS RF power amplifler (PA) for ultra-wideband (UWB) transmitter in the 3.1 to 4.8GHz band is presented in this paper. The proposed two-stage PA employs a cascode topology on the flrst stage as driver while the second stage is a simple common source (CS) amplifler. In order to improve the e-ciency and output power, the output impedance of the driver amplifler (flrst stage) is optimized so that it falls on the source-pull contours of the second stage amplifler. On-wafer measurement on the fabricated prototype showed a maximum power gain of +15:8dB, 0.6dB gain ∞atness, +11:3dBm of output 1dB gain compression and up to a maximum of 17.3% power added e-ciency (PAE) at 4GHz using a 50› load termination, while consuming only 25.7mW from a 1.8V supply voltage. Measurement results obtained are used to create a non-linear power-dependent S-parameter (P2D) model for wideband input and output matching optimizations and co-simulations with the UWB modulated test signals. Using the created P2D model, the PA achieved a maximum output channel power of +3:48dBm with an error vector magnitude (EVM) of i23:1dB and complied with the WiMedia mask speciflcations.

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