23.5–27.5 GHz Band Doherty Power Amplifier Integrated Circuit Using 28 nm Bulk CMOS Process Based on Dynamic Power Dividing Network

Abstract

This paper presents a Doherty power amplifier (DPA) integrated circuit (IC) designed to have enhanced gain, efficiency, and AM-AM characteristics through a dynamic power dividing technique, which can control the power dividing ratio according to the input power. Since this multi-purpose dynamic power dividing network also provides the phase offset and impedance matching at the interstage network needed for appropriate DPA operation, the active IC area could be reduced. To verify the proposed technique and its analysis, the DPA was implemented with a 28 nm bulk CMOS process for the fifth-generation (5G) new radio (NR) millimeter-wave frequency band of 23.5–27.5 GHz. The measured results showed a gain of 20.3–21.9 dB, saturated output power of 14.0–15.2 dBm, power added efficiency (PAE) of 22.8–26.7% at the peak power, and PAE of 14.6–17.6% at the 6 dB output power back-off (OBO).