Integrated Power Amplifiers for Large-Scale Phased Array Applications

Large-scale RF/mm-wave phased arrays have become ubiquitous in many wireless communication and sensing applications, such as SATCOM, base stations, radars, and relays. Most these array-based systems promise performance features, such as high element counts, high element density, moderate thermal density, and deployment capability in mobile or energy-/cost-constrained platforms. In particular, these high-density large-scale phased arrays often exhibit significant electromagnetic and thermal couplings between their antenna elements. Consequently, the front-end circuits and beamformer chips in these arrays now face multiple new challenges that do not exist in traditional single transmitter-receiver radios. As an example, power amplifiers, a key front-end building block in any phased arrays, are expected to achieve smaller form factor, higher energy efficiency, and antenna load VSWR resilience to meet the needs of these high-density large-scale phased arrays. In this workshop talk, several recently published RF/mm-wave power amplifier designs from ETH IDEAS group that are specifically tailored to enable large-scale phased arrays implementations will be presented.