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ABSTRACT A three-stage 60-GHz power amplifier (PA) has been implemented in a 65 nm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology. High-quality-factor slow-wave coplanar waveguides (S-CPW) were used for input, output and inter-stage matching networks to improve the performance. Being biased for Class-A operation, the PA exhibits a measured power gain G of 18.3 dB at the working frequency, with a 3-dB bandwidth of 8.5 GHz. The measured 1-dB output compression point (OCP1dB) and the maximum saturated output power Psat are 12 dBm and 14.2 dBm, respectively, with a DC power consumption of 156 mW under 1.2 V voltage supply. The measured peak power added efficiency PAE is 16%. The die area is 0.52 mm2 (875 × 600 μm2) including all the pads, whereas the effective area is only 0.24 mm2. In addition, the performance improvement of the PA in terms of G, OCP1dB, Psat, PAE and the figure of merit using S-CPW instead of thin film microstrip have been demonstrated. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:99-109, 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the contribution of slow-wave coplanar waveguides on the performance of power amplifiers operating at millimeter-wave frequencies in CMOS-integrated technologies. These transmission lines present a quality factor Q two to three times higher than that of the conventional microstrip lines at the same characteristic impedance. To demonstrate the contribution of the slow-wave transmission lines on integrated millimeter-wave amplifiers performance, two Class-A single-stage power amplifiers (PA) operating at 60 GHz were designed in standard 40 nm CMOS technology. One of the power amplifiers incorporates only the microstrip lines, whereas slow-wave coplanar transmission lines are considered in the other one. Both amplifiers are biased in Class-A operation, drawing, respectively, 22 and 23 mA from 1.2 V supply. Compared to the power amplifier using conventional microstrip transmission lines, the one implemented with slow-wave transmission lines shows improved performances in terms of gain (5.6 dB against 3.3 dB), 1 dB output compression point (OCP1dB: 7 dBm against 5 dBm), saturated output power (Psat: >10 and 8 dBm, respectively), power-added efficiency (PAE: 16% instead of 6%), and die area without pads (Sdie: 0.059 mm2 against 0.069 mm2). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]