Design of a single - chip, dual-band (2.4 GHz - WLAN and 3.6 GHz WiMAX), class a power amplifier using 0.25m-SiGe HBT technology

Abstract

In this work, a dual-band, Class-A, power amplifier (PA) has been designed using IHP (Innovations for High Performance), 0.25´m-SiGe HBT process technology. The behavior of the amplifier has been optimized for 2.4 GHz (WLAN) and 3.6 GHz (UWB-WiMAX) frequency bands. Dual band characteristic of the amplifier was obtained by using a voltage-controlled, MOS-based capacitor (varactor), available in IHP’s technology library, utilized in the output impedancematching network of the amplifier. Tuning voltage of the varactor changes the equivalent impedance of the matching network, hence used to maximize the output power at each frequency. Post- Layout simulation results of the PA circuit provided the following performance parameters: output power of 28-dBm, gain value of 27-dB and efficiency value of %16 for the WLAN band and output power of 29-dBm, gain value of