A Frequency-Agile Digital-to-RF Power Amplifier in 22 nm FD-SOI CMOS Technology

This work presents a frequency-agile digital-to-RF power amplifier (DPA) in 22 nm FD-SOI CMOS technology that supports carrier frequencies from 2 GHz to 6 GHz. The DPA is based on a current-mode, switched-mode power amplifier (CM-SMPA) that combines conductance modulation and radio frequency pulse-width modulation (RFPWM). Compared to a CM-SMPA with conductance modulation only, the number of required unit cells and thus the wiring effort can be reduced and the back-off efficiency of the DPA can be increased. The peak output power is 22.5 dBm with a peak drain efficiency and a system efficiency of 35.7 % and 33.1 %, respectively. For a 40 MBd 64-QAM signal at a carrier frequency of 3.6 GHz, an EVM of -30.9 dB is achieved. Compared to other sub-6 GHz DPAs, it provides the highest carrier frequency range with the highest demonstrated signal bandwidth of 1 GHz.