A FULL X-BAND CMOS AMPLIFIER WITH WIDEBAND CLASS-E HARMONIC MATCHING

Abstract

A fully integrated medium power amplifier operating over the entire X-band is demonstrated in a 0.11-mu m CMOS technology. A double-resonance technique is used for wideband input matching. At the output load, wideband class-E harmonic matching is performed for up to the third harmonic frequency to achieve high output power and efficiency. The amplifier exhibits measured small-signal gain exceeding 7.6 dB over a wide 3-dB bandwidth from 7.6 to 13.7 GHz. The output power and power added efficiency (PAE) are higher than 10.7 dBm and 15%, respectively, at the entire X-band (8-12 GHz). The peak PAE is 20.2% with an output power of 12.4 dBm at 10 GHz. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.