D-band Stacked Common-Base Power Amplifier with 19.2dBm oP_1dB in 55 nm SiGe BiCMOS

This paper presents the design and experimental validation of a stacked common-base power amplifier (PA) tailored for D-band communication systems. Leveraging 55 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology, the proposed PA architecture combines the superior gain compression performance of the common-base topology with the higher voltage swing provided by stacked-transistor power amplifiers. Experimental results demonstrate a peak output power of 19.7 dBm with only a 0.5 dB lower 1-dB compression point ($o P_{1 \mathrm{dB}}$) of 19.2 dBm at 135 GHz. The power added efficiency (PAE) reaches $\mathbf{1 2. 1 \%}$ at saturation and 11.5% at $o P_{\text {ldB }}$.