A 1.53-mm² Fully-Integrated Wi-Fi 7 Front-End Module with 1.65-dB NF and 41.9% FBW in 0.25-µm GaAs p-HEMT Technology

This paper presents a highly integrated front-end module (FEM) in a 0.25-µm GaAs p-HEMT process for Wi-Fi 7 applications. The design incorporates a wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA) with a feedforward capacitor structure demonstrating 74% fractional bandwidth (FBW) and a noise figure of 1.65–2.3 dB. It also features a three-stage nonlinear power amplifier (PA) with dynamic bias optimization, achieving 16.2–16.5 dBm output power and 8.5% power-added efficiency (PAE) at -43 dB error vector magnitude (EVM) for 320-MHz 4096-QAM signals under digital predistortion (DPD). Additionally, the design includes a co-designed switch with absorptive electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection supporting human body model (HBM) 2 kV. The measured results show small-signal gains of 11.9–13.9 dB and 28.5–31.5 dB in receive (RX) and transmit (TX) modes across 4.9–7.5 GHz. Implemented in the smallest reported die area of 0.9×1.7 mm², this work demonstrates superior integration density and performance for next-generation Wi-Fi systems.