12 GHz Stacked Power Amplifier with 22.9 dBm P_sat and 44.9% PAE_sat for 6G in 22nm FDSOI

This paper presents a stacked power amplifier (PA) operating in the 6G Frequency Range 3 (FR3) band. With three stacked transistors and a V<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">DD</inf> of 2.4V, this PA achieves a P<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">sat</inf> of 22.9 dBm and a PAE<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">sat</inf> of 44.9% at 12 GHz. When tested under a 100 MHz single-carrier 64-QAM signal at 12 GHz, this PA achieves an average output power of 18.5 dBm and an average PAE of 31% at an EMV<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">rms</inf> of -25.1 dB. With a 100 MHz 256-QAM signal, this PA achieves P<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">avg</inf> of 16.8 dBm and PAE<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">avg</inf> of 25%. Multiple chip samples have been tested to validate the measurement results. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a silicon PA supporting high-speed complex modulation with high efficiency for the 6G FR3 band. This PA design also showcases the best modulation efficiency for 64-QAM and 256-QAM among silicon PA designs in the same frequency range. Furthermore, this design achieves a 1W/mm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> power density with only a 2.4V supply.