4.5 A 13.5dBm Fully Integrated 200-to-255GHz Power Amplifier with a 4-Way Power Combiner in SiGe:C BiCMOS

In order to efficiently utilize the frequency band above 200GHz for radar and communication applications, enough transmitted output power is essential to overcome the elevated path loss. For silicon-based technologies, the available output power at this frequency range is limited. The enlarging of the transistor size and so the corresponding power handling leads to a reduced output impedance. This causes the impedance transformation ratio to increase allowing only for narrow-band designs. Power combining of multiple single power amplifiers (PAs) is a common approach to achieve high output power alleviating the need to enlarge the devices size [1]. In this paper, we present a fully integrated PA that combines the power of 4 differential PA units using a 4-way zero-degree combiner and a 4-way active splitter to feed the 4 PA units.