Ka-Band Orthogonal Load-Modulated Balanced Amplifier in 22 nm CMOS FDSOI

An integrated orthogonal load-modulated balanced amplifier (OLMBA) is designed and fabricated using 22 nm CMOS FDSOI. The input control signal in OLMBA is reflected back to balanced power amplifier (PA) pair via reactively terminated quadrature hybrid at the output in order to achieve load modulation. The proposed PA operates at third generation partnership project/new radio (3GPP/NR) 26/28 GHz Frequency Range 2 (FR2), achieving 19.5 dBm output power, 16.6 dB gain, 15.7% power added efficiency (PAE) and 18.3 dBm output 1-dB compression point (P1dB), measured at 26 GHz. The PA shows excellent linearity performance with modulated signals. Using -28 dBc adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) and -21.9 dB (8%) error vector magnitude as threshold values, the proposed PA achieves 11.4 dBm and 4.9 dBm average output power (Pavg) with 100 MHz and 400 MHz 64-QAM 3GPP/NR FR2 signal, and 14 dBm Pavg with 0.6 Gb/s (120 MHz) single carrier (SC) 64-QAM signal, measured at 26 GHz.