A V-band self-healing power amplifier with adaptive feedback bias control in 65 nm CMOS

Abstract

A self-healing two-stage 60 GHz power amplifier (PA) with amplitude/phase compensation is realized in 65 nm CMOS. An adaptive feedback bias scheme with three control knobs is proposed to extend the linear operating region and enhance chip-to-chip performance yield; allowing a 5.5 dB improvement of the output 1-dB compression point (P1dB) and a less than 2% chip-to-chip gain variation. At a 1 V supply, the fully differential PA achieves a saturation output power (Psat) of 14.85 dBm with a peak power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 16.2%. With the on-chip amplitude compensation, the P1dB is extended to 13.7 dBm. With the on-chip phase compensation, the output phase variation is minimized to less than 0.5 degree. To the best of our knowledge, this PA provides the highest Psat and P1dB with simultaneous high PAE for a single PA reported to date. The PA delivers a linear gain of 9.7 dB and has a 7 GHz bandwidth from 55.5 to 62.5 GHz with a very compact area of 0.042 mm2.