Compact K/Ka-Band Frontend PA and LNA in 16nm FinFET for Next Generation Digitally Intensive Arrays

This paper presents a two-stage power amplifier (PA) and a one stage low noise amplifier (LNA), both implemented in a 16nm FinFET process. The PA consists of a common-source (CS) driver stage and doubly neutralized cascode power stage. With a 5G NR FR2 100 MHz 64-QAM modulated signal, this PA achieves an average output power of 10.7 dBm and an average power added-efficiency (PAE) of 13.7% at 24 GHz. The rms error vector magnitude (EVMrms) is -25.1 dB. The LNA utilizes a cascoded inductive source degenerated common source topology. It achieves S11 <-10 dB bandwidth from 27.5 to 30 GHz and S21 -3dB bandwidth from 24.5 to 32 GHz. The measured NF is 2.2 dB at 27 GHz. The power consumption is 10.4 mW. With two tones at 26.95 GHz and 27.05 GHz, the measured IIP3 is 0.87 dBm.