High Efficiency W-Band Power Amplifiers Using Ring-Shaped Sub

High Efficiency W-band Power Amplifiers using Ring-Shaped Sub-Quarter-Wavelength Power Combining Technique Saeid Daneshgar1, Hyun-chul Park1, Johann C. Rode1, Zach Griffith2, Miguel Urteaga2, Byung-sung Kim3, and Mark J. W. Rodwell1 1ECE Department, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA, 2Teledyne Scientific and Imaging, 1049 Camino Dos Rios, Thousand Oaks, CA, 91360, USA, 3ECE Department, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 440-746, South Korea. Email: [email protected] Ȝ/4 Ȝ/4 Abstract —We present W-band power amplifiers which are iL M3 designed using the sub-quarter-wavelength transmission line M2 iL 0.25 µ CPAp=0 RL=50ȍ balun in a ring-shaped configuration and fabricated in a m CPAn=0 86 GHz InP DHBT technology. Operating at , a single-stage M1 PAn PAP PA exhibits 20.86 dBm saturated output power with 10.2dB (a) Sub-Ȝ/4 Sub-Ȝ/4 peak power gain, a recored PAE of 35 % and a record 3-dB iL M3 33 GHz 22.75 dBm istub istub bandwidth of . A two-stage PA exhibits M2 iL RL=50ȍ saturated output power with 20.4dB peak power gain, a PAE CPAp>0 CPAn>0 of 32.8 % and a 3-dB bandwidth of 16 GHz. (b) M1 PAn PAP Index Terms—W-band power amplifier, high efficiency, power combining techniques, sub-quarter-wavelength balun, InP HBT. Fig. 1. Current flow diagram of (a) λ/4 and (b) sub-λ/4 transmission line balun. I. INTRODUCTION The sub-mm-wave/mm-wave spectrum has large available bandwidth and will enable very wideband communications. as open stubs to the PAs. A 50 Ω transmission line is also Given the extreme foul-weather attenuation, large phased constructed between M3 and M2 which is ideally supposed arrays, low noise receivers, and high-power amplifiers (PAs) to be shielded from the main ground of the system (M1).In are the critical enabling technologies. Sub-mm-wave/mm-wave this case, a traveling wave will enter to the transmission line PA design is difficult because of low breakdown voltages, high from the output port of the balun (connected to the load in skin-effect losses, and the large interconnect reactances. Fig. 1(a)) and propagate along the line while it is shielded In order to design a high power and efficiency power am- from outside. When it reaches to the end of the transmission plifier, three approaches can be considered: (a) classic output line, it sees two PAs in parallel with two open stubs. Due power-combining techniques using λ/4 or shorter transmission to the symmetry, power will be balanced between the PAs. lines where the die area is large and the loss of substrate Current flow analysis shown in Fig. 1(a) represents this fact needs to be prevented by shielding it [1], (b) stacking (series where the current (iL) flows from the load (RL) to the top connecting) of the transistors [2], [3] where keeping all the metal (M3) of the transmission line and it enters to the PAn stacked transistors operating in phase to get the maximum through the via M23. At the same time, a same amount of power is a challenge, and (c) recently introduced sub-quarter- current in the opposite direction flows on the bottom metal wavelength (sub-λ/4) transmission line balun [4] where power (M2) of the transmission line which sinks the current from combining is performed using a low loss balun with much the PAp. shorter than λ/4 line sections. In reality, the two PAs include a finite amount of capac- In this paper we have designed high efficiency PAs using itance. Therefore, the length of the stubs can be decreased the third approach in a ring-shaped configuration where the in an amount that they resonate with the total capacitance of corresponding grounds of the sub-λ/4 stubs are tied together the PAs. This is shown in Fig. 1(b) where the current istub which decreases the port imbalance ratio of the balun and will only flow in the loop of the sub-λ/4 stubs and the PA consequently results less loss and higher PAE. capacitance and it will not enter to the PAs. In this way, the length of the stubs and consequently the length of the balun II. OPERATION OF SUB-λ/4 TRANSMISSION LINE BALUN can be decreased up to λ/16 which has a significant impact Figure 1(a) shows the λ/4 balun implemented in a three on the total insertion loss of the balun. layer metal stack (M1–M3) and two ideal PAs (PAn and PAp) The sub-λ/4 balun shown in Fig. 1(b) will have port with zero output capacitance have been connected to the input imbalance in real implementation where the 50 Ω transmission ports of the balun. Considering M1 as the main ground of line on M3 is not fully shielded from the main ground of the system, the balun is consisted of two λ/4 stubs in M2 the system (M1). Increasing the width of the stubs in M2 which are shorted to ground at their end point and behave will overcome this problem and decrease the port imbalance, 978·1-4799-3869-8/14/$31.00 ®2014 IEEE (a) (b) Fig. 2. Ring-shaped sub-λ/4 2-way balun. (c) VCC Fig. 4. Die-photos of (a) Single-stage PA 0.718 × 0.595 μm2 , (b) Test chip with two back-to-back baluns and (c) Two-stage PA Matching 2 Network 1.378 × 0.595 μm . 8x6x0.25μm RFout RFin 8x6x0.25μm VBB 0 Matching Network −1 VCC −2 Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the single-stage PA. (dB) −3 21 S −4 however, this will decrease the characteristic impedance of the −5 S 21−simulated stubs and consequently will decrease the overall bandwidth S 21−measured of the balun. The other solution is shielding the transmission −6 M 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 line in 3 using two sidewalls similar to the one reported Frequency (GHz) in [4]. Here in this design, we propose the ring configuration to implement the sub-λ/4 balun where the two stubs share the Fig. 5. Simulated and measured insertion loss for the back-to-back ring- same ground at their end point which consequently decreases shaped sub-λ/4 baluns. the port imbalance due to the difference between the location of the grounds at the end points of the stubs. Moreover, the two stubs have higher characteristic impedance at this (M2 and M1 with 1 μm thickness). M3 and M2 interconnects configuration which significantly increases the bandwidth of are separated by 5 μm BCB interlayer dielectric layer while the balun. Fig. 2 shows the layout of the ring-shaped sub- the thickness of BCB between M2 and M1 is 1 μm.MIM λ/4 balun where the shielding sidewalls on M3 is also used capacitors and thin-film resistors are 0.3fF/μm2 and 50 Ω/, to enhance the balance between the ports. The stubs are AC respectively. 1pF grounded using a bypass capacitance in order to make Fig. 3 shows the circuit diagram of the single-stage PA de- the balun suitable for providing the DC supply of the PAs. signed in this work. Since the amount of inductance provided by the ring-shaped sub-λ/4 balun was large, an additional III. PA CIRCUIT ARCHITECTURE parallel stub has been used at each port to decrease the The PAs were designed using a 0.25 μm InP DHBT tech- total shunt inductance. Multi-finger transistors are resized to nology, which exhibits BVCEO =4.5V, fmax =590 GHz,and 8 × 6 × 0.25 μm at each port in order to make the slope of fT = 350 GHz. A three-metal interconnect stack is used in their optimum loadline equal to 25 Ω which is the impedance the fabrication of the circuit. Compact, stacked interconnect seen at each port of the sub-λ/4 balun. The two-stage PA vias provide access from the top layer of metal interconnect is designed by cascading two single-stage PAs with a DC for signal (M3 with 3 μm thickness) to the two lower layers blocking capacitor between them. 978·1-4799-3869-8/14/$31.00 ®2014 IEEE TABLE I COMPARISON TO SIMILAR W-BAND PAS REPORTED IN THE LITERATURE. Freq.S BW P PAE P /V P /Area 21-max -3dB sat Peak Die-size DC cc sat Ref. Process (GHz) (dB) (GHz) (dBm) (%) mm2 (mW/V) mW/mm2 Topology 4-stage CS, [5] 0.15 μm GaN HEMT 91 16 ≈ 730.8 > 20 2.5 × 0.9 6125/17.5 530 4-way combiner 2-stage Stacked FET, [3] 65 nm SOI CMOS 86 − 94 10.2 ≈ 12 15.8110.72 × 0.42 −/2.8 126 No combiner 3-stage CB, [7] 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS 84 27 > 8189 0.79 × 0.86 395/2.592.9 4-way combiner 86 9.42320.37 30.40.448 × 0.816 277/2.5 294 1-stage CE, Straight sub-λ/4 Balun [4] 250 nm InP DHBT 86 17.5 − 23.14 30.20.824 × 0.816 516/3 307 2-stage CE, Straight sub-λ/4 Balun 86 10.2 33 20.86 35 0.718 × 0.595 271/2.5 285 1-stage CE, This Ring-shaped sub-λ/4 Balun 250 nm InP DHBT work 86 20.41622.75 32.8 1.378 × 0.595 450/3 230 2-stage CE, Ring-shaped sub-λ/4 Balun 20 3 dB 10 3 dB 10 0 0 S −10 S −10 21−simulated 21−simulated S S 21−measured 21−measured S S 11−simulated −20 11−simulated S−parameters (dB) S S−parameters (dB) S 11−measured 11−measured S S 22−simulated 22−simulated −20 S S 22−measured −30 22−measured 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 Frequency (GHz) Frequency (GHz) Fig.

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