Design Techniques for Wideband CMOS Power Amplifiers for Wireless Communications

In this study, we designed a wideband CMOS power amplifier to support multi-band and multi-standard wireless communications. First, an input matching technique through LC network and a wideband design technique using a low Q-factor transformer were proposed. In addition, a design technique was proposed to improve output matching using RC feedback. To verify the feasibility of the proposed design methodology for wideband CMOS power amplifiers, the designed power amplifier was fabricated using a 180 nm RFCMOS process. The size including all of the matching network and test pads was 1.38 × 0.90 mm2. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed power amplifier was verified through the measured results using modulated signals of WCDMA, LTE, and 802.11n WLAN.