High Efficient CMOS Class-E Power Amplifier with a New Output Power Control Scheme

This paper presents the design of a novel RF power amplifier (PA) with a new output power control scheme suitable for RF-ICs and portable systems. Employing a class-E amplifier as a driver together with soft-switching property of the main power stage switching mode class-E PA helps to achieve better efficiency and increases the capability of circuit integration. A new circuit scheme for efficient output power control is introduced in the proposed PA based on the array of switches and compensated shunt capacitors with different sizes. This technique improves the Power-Added-Efficiency (PAE) and its drop specially at lower output power levels in comparison with conventional power control methods. The layout of the designed PA is made in 0.18um 1P6M CMOS process, and the chip area is 1.7mm2. simulation results show that the designed PA delivers 21.09dBm output power to a 50Ω standard load from a 1.8V supply voltage at 2.4GHz operating frequency with 57% PAE. Additionally, the output power of the PA is controlled with steps of 1-dBm by using the proposed array of switches and capacitors. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]