0.18 um CMOS power amplifier for 2.45 GHz IoT application
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Date
2018-06
Authors
Ang, Wei Keat
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Abstract
Due to the emerging of the Internet of Things (IoT) industry in recent years, the
demand for the higher integration of wireless communication system with higher data
rate of transmission capacity and lower power consumption has increases tremendously.
The design of Radio Frequency (RF) Power Amplifier (PA) is getting more challenging
and crucial. In this work, a 0.18 um CMOS PA for 2.45 GHz IoT application is presented.
The designed PA consists of two stages, which are the driver stage and output stage. Both
driver stage and output stage utilise single stage common source transistor configuration.
In the view of performance, the PA is able to deliver more than 20 dB gain in the
frequency range of 2.4 GHz to 2.5 GHz. The maximum output power achieved by PA is
13.44 dBm. As the PA designed is targeted for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmitter,
a minimum of 10 dBm output power should be achieved by PA to transmit the signal in
BLE standard. The PA exhibits a nearly constant Third-order Output Intercept Point
(OIP3) of 18 dBm before PA goes into saturated after 10 dBm output power. The PA
shows a peak Power Added Efficiency (PAE) of 17.61 % at 13.24 dBm output power.
Therefore, the designed PA exhibits good linearity up to 10 dBm output power without
sacrificing much on the efficiency. At the operating frequency of 2.45 GHz, the PA
exhibits stability k-factor, 𝐾𝑓 value of more than 1 and thus the said PA is considered as
unconditionally stable. Besides, the PA shows s-parameters performance of -7.91 dBm
for 𝑆11 and -11.07 dBm for 𝑆22. These performances of PA are achieved with input power
supply of 1.8 V.