A 16-way 115-129 GHz High Power Amplifier with 20.9 dBm PSAT and 17.6 dBm P1dB in 40 nm Bulk CMOS

This paper presents a 115-129 GHz power amplifier (PA) with a record PSAT in 40-nm bulk CMOS. The PA is based on 4-stage differential common-source with cross-coupled capacitive neutralization with optimum device sizing and stage scaling with a transmission-line based low-loss 8:1 power combiner. On-wafer measurement shows 21.3 dB peak S21 and 14 GHz 3-dB bandwidth, with 20.9 dBm PSAT, 17.6 dBm P1dB and 7.6 % power-added efficiency at 125 GHz at 1.2 V supply. The chip size of the PA is 1.34 mm2 including pads, with 0.69mm2 core area. To the best of authors’ knowledge, the proposed PA shows the highest PSAT and P1dB for a D-band PA in CMOS.