A 2.4GHz monolithic SiGe power amplifier for Wireless-LAN transceiver
A high-linearity power amplifier (PA) for 2.4GHz Wireless-LAN transceiver is presented. The PA is designed and implemented using a 0.18um SiGe BiCMOS process. An on-chip adaptive linearizer is comprised of a base-emitter diode of the bias transistor and a bypass capacitor with almost no increase in die area and no extra dc consumption. Besides the linearization function, the active biasing circuit is also temperature-insensitive with simple structure. Including all matching circuits and biasing circuits, the die area of the fully integrated PA is 1.2mm∗1.1mm. Temperature simulation indicates the variation of power gain is less than 1.6dB from 20°C to 80°C. The second-order and third-order LMD are less than −30.9dBc and −34.5dBc when the output PI dB has been reached. With 3.3 V supply, the PA achieves max PldB of 23.2dBm and a power added efficiency (PAE) of 21.3%