Broadband High Gain mm-Wave CMOS Amplifier With Complex Device Neutralization for 5G Communication System

Presently, the major challenge at the device level is the lack of sufficient device power gain of commercial IC technologies at THz. In this dissertation, we will address this device-level challenge. We first characterize their THz behaviors/modeling. Then, novel circuits-aware device core designs and optimizations to boost the device-level “gain-bandwidth product” at THz are presented. This dissertation presents a wideband power amplifier at THz frequency range. The proposed power amplifier covers the frequency range from 100 to 125 GHz, supporting the operation in the low band of the D-band. Moreover, a novel embedding network, called complex neutralization scheme, is presented to boost the power gain of the device for near-fmax operation. Furthermore, in-house automation program is presented for optimum selection of the complex neutralization embedding network. The goal of this program is to maximize device Gain-BW for the available technology at target operating frequencies. Furthermore, the proposed power amplifier is cascaded to increase the output power along with high gain. The presented work contains 3-stage complex neutralized differential blocks with output power combiner. The matching stages are optimized for low loss and wideband operation. The proposed power amplifier is taped-out on using GlobalFoundries 45nm FD-SOI CMOS process. The electromagnetic simulations for the proposed power amplifier, which is biased in class AB, demonstrate a small signal gain of 19dB at 115 GHz with k factor more than 17. Moreover, the large signal simulations show a peak power added efficiency of 14% with saturated output power of 12.6dBm. The proposed system has a total active area of 0.23mm².M.S