A Compact Doubly Neutralized Ku-Band Power Amplifier With 39% Peak PAE and 23-dBm Output Power in 22FDX+ EDMOS for 6G FR3

This letter presents a compact, doubly neutralized, two-stage power amplifier (PA) utilizing the new extended drain (EDMOS) device in 22FDX+, designed for 6G frequency range 3 (FR3) and Ku-band applications. Cascode double neutralization is proposed and analyzed in detail to demonstrate its necessity for the stability of RF/mmWave PA designs in scaled technology nodes. The PA achieves a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P {_{\text {SAT}}}$</tex-math> </inline-formula> of 23.55 dBm and a PAE<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">MAX</sub> of 39.27% at 12 GHz. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work demonstrates the highest reported power density of 1.49 W/mm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> using only a 2.4-V supply, thanks to the EDMOS device. Furthermore, it represents the first demonstration of a CMOS PA in 6G FR3 supporting the broadest complex modulation bandwidth, achieving 4250 MHz with 64-QAM and 1250 MHz with 256-QAM signals.