A 250–310 GHz Power Amplifier With 15-dB Peak Gain in 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS Process for Terahertz Wireless System

This article presents a broadband THz power amplifier (PA) operating close to the maximum oscillation frequency (fmax) with proposed power combining and stagger-tuned gain boosting techniques. A compact broadband power combiner based on the compensated three-conductor transmission line (T-line) balun is proposed to simultaneously achieve broadband matching and power combining. A 4-stage stagger-tuned gain boosting amplifier operating closely tofmaxis investigated to achieve a flattened power gain. Based on the proposed techniques, a broadband 300-GHz PA is implemented in a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS process withft/fmax= 350/450 GHz. It exhibits a peak gain of 15 dB and 3-dB bandwidth of 67 GHz (247–314 GHz) with 2.5 V supply voltage. At 290 GHz, a 5-dBm maximum output powerPOUT-MAXwas measured with a 1-dB compressed output powerOP−1 dBof 3.3 dBm and a maximum PAE of 1.19%. The measured output powerPOUT-MAXandOP-1dBof the PA are 2.2–5 dBm and 0.6–3.3 dBm over 250–300 GHz, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this PA achieves the highest operational frequency and widest bandwidth compared with other works in SiGe/CMOS process operating closely tofmax.