High-Efficiency High-Gain 2.4 GHz Class-B Power Amplifiers in 0.13 µm CMOS for Wireless Communications

Abstract

This paper presents high-efficiency high-gain 2.4 GHz power amplifiers (PAs) for wireless communications. Two class-B PAs are designed and verified in 0.13 µm CMOS mixed-signal/RF process provided by TSMC. The PAs employs cascode topologies with wideband multi-stage matchings. The single-stage cascode PA is designed for a high power added efficiency (PAE) of 35.4% while the gain is 20.4 dB over the -3 dB bandwidth between 2.4 GHz and 2.48 GHz. The two-stage cascode PA is targeted for a high gain of 37.7 dB while it exhibits a peak PAE of 24.1%. Supplied by 1.2 V supply voltages, the PAs consume DC powers of 4.5 mW and 9 mW, respectively.