ISBN 9783843941761

978-3-8439-4176-1, Reihe Elektrotechnik

Mohsin Mumtaz Tarar
Efficient and Wideband CMOS Distributed Power Amplifiers for Various High Data Rate Applications

149 Seiten, Dissertation Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (2019), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

Broadband amplification is one of the most critical requirements of any broadband communication system, be it wireless or wired network. Wireless networks such as ultra-wideband communication network require low output power levels of the order of few milliwatts spanning over 7.5 GHz of bandwidth. In wired network category, for instance, optical fiber communication demand large driving output power levels of the modulators to realize the next generation 400 Gbps links. Other wideband applications such as military radar and imaging systems, test instruments, phased array radar systems etc., also set a diversified power level requirement over wide bandwidth. Such diverse and stringent requirements become further challenging in case of CMOS based amplification solutions.

This work addresses the aforementioned challenges by demonstrating wideband power amplifiers based on distributed topology in standard CMOS technology. The goal is directed toward developing efficient wideband amplifiers that demonstrate noteworthy performance in three major genres. Firstly, for low output power wideband application, a compact active-split dual feed distributed topology is presented which targets high gain and low noise. The proposed distributed topology also demonstrates power-efficient amplification due to the omitted idle terminations at the output stage. The second design targets high gain-bandwidth-product to address multi-Gbps data rates applications. It is based on cascaded multistage distributed amplifiers that inherently show good driving capability with high gain and medium output power. The topology is also devoid of idle-termination to boost the low frequency gain and incorporates loss-compensation technique for high frequency losses. Additionally, the interstage transmission lines are tapered to reduce the reverse travelling currents toward enabling power-efficient amplification. Third and last design accommodates high output power wideband applications. A stacked CMOS distributed power amplifier has been proposed for the first time in CMOS that employs stacked FETs to enhance the output power. Uniform distributed topology ensures safe operation of the proposed amplifier. This implementation demonstrates medium-to-high power levels with reasonable efficiency over a wideband of operation.