Impact of RF Frequency Bands on the DC and Large Signal Reliability of a 45nm RFSOI NFET based Power Amplifier Cell

Abstract

In this work we highlight the impact of RF frequency on the DC and large signal reliability performance of a single nFET based power-amplifier (PA) cell for three different frequency bands, e.g., Ku, K, and Ka. We observe that the overall performance of the PA cell is superior in the Ka-band but the performance degradation due to reliability mechanisms is also more in this band. The impact of large-signal stress is high when PA is stressed in compression or near the P1dB region. This holds true for all frequency bands investigated in this work.