An $X$ -Band 29.6-dBm CMOS Power Amplifier Using Folded Radial Splitter and Binary Combiner Network.

An ${{X}}$ -band fully integrated power amplifier (PA) has been designed and fabricated on CMOS technology. Utilizing a transformer-based folded radial power splitter and binary power combiner network, the CMOS PA delivers 29.6 dBm saturation power (${{P}}_{\mathbf {sat}}$) at 11 GHz. The measured gain is 11.2 dB, the output of 1-dB compression point (${{OP}}_{\mathbf {1\,dB}}$) is 28.2 dBm, and the peak power-added efficiency (PAE) is 15.5% at 11 GHz. To our knowledge, the PA achieves the highest ${{P}}_{\mathbf {sat}}$ and the highest ${{OP}}_{\mathbf {1\,dB}}$ among other reported CMOS PAs around ${{X}}$ -band to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]