An Ultra-Compact Differential V-Band Power Amplifier Using EDMOS Transistors With 18.1 dBm P1dB and 21% PAE in 22nm FD-SOI CMOS

Abstract

This paper presents a compact, fully differential, two-stage millimeter-wave (mm-wave) cascode power amplifier (PA) designed and implemented in a 22nm FD-SOI CMOS process (22FDX+). The PA employs the newly introduced extended-drain MOS (EDMOS) device in 22FDX+, together with a carefully engineered device core and transformer baluns. At 50 GHz, the prototype achieves 18.8 dBm saturated output power (PSAT), 18.1 dBm 1-dB compression output power P1dB, and 21% power-added efficiency (PAE) at P1dB. To the best of our knowledge, this work achieves the highest reported power density of 2.6 W/mm2 among single-way, two-stage CMOS cascode PAs.