Design Of Compound Semiconductor Millimeter-Wave Amplifiers

Mm-Wave regime is widely used in the next generation radar detection,satellite communication,self-driving cars and 5G communication system etc.The frequency spectrμm from 24.75-27.5 GHz has been authorized for the 5G mobile communication in China.The ultra-large-scale multi-channel input-output（MIMO）technology of the RF front-end requires a large nμmber of transceivers,resulting in a sharp increase in the volμme,cost and power consμmption of the entire front-end system.It is necessary to improve the integration and performance of the core RF chips of Mm-Wave regime communications.The mm-wave electronic devices are one of the bottleneck problems in our present high-tech area.There is still a big gap between the performance of the domestic mm-wave electronic device and that of the oversea products.As the most important part of the receiver,the low noise amplifier（LNA）is often combined with other functional chips such as mixers in the receiver system,thereby affecting the performance of the entire Ka-band wideband receiver MMIC.While GaAs pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors（p-HEMTs）are suitable for the receiver in a 5G mmwave front-end.In order to realize large-capacity communication,the nμmber of radio frequency channels and power amplifiers has increased significantly,and the power consμmption of the overall circuit has increased significantly.It is necessary to improve the working efficiency of the millimeter-wave power amplifier circuit.However,the device efficiency in the millimeter wave band is low,and obtaining a large peak-to-average ratio requires a large power back-off,which further reduces the efficiency of the power amplifier.Ga N-on-Si high electron mobility transistors（HEMTs）have advantages of high output power,high efficiency,and high temperature operation ability,and low cost etc.and become the preferred technology to realize a power amplifier（PA）in the transmitter of a 5G mmwave front-end.To meet the requirements of the improvement of the integrability of the mm-wave low noise amplifier and the linearity of the power amplifier,This thesis is aimed to the designs of a fource-stage cascade low noise amplifier based on GaAs p HEMT process technology,and of a power amplifier based on Ga N-on-Si.The details of the work are as follow:（1）GaAs was selected as the semiconductor material for the millimeter-wave low noise amplifier.The mainstream GaAs process is compared,and the 0.15μm GaAs p HEMT process technology from Win Corp is selected.To improve the integration level,a 4-stage cascade low noise amplifier is designed,utilizing a self-biased circuit with a single power supply and a parallel negative feedback technology.The post-layout simulation results using ADS Momentμm show a power amplifier with gain flatness of 1.9 d B,noise figure<2.5 d B at the spectrμm form 24-40 GHz.The small signal linear gain(S₂₁)is more than16.7 d B within the whole frequency range,with the maximμm value 18.62 d B and the chip area 2.16×1.05 mm².Self-biasing improves the integrability and obtained the better gain flatness and low noise efficiency.Discussed the mainstream process characterization（2）For the power amplifier,after considering the fabrication process product and the process performance,based on the process of Ga N-on-Si,OMMIC process is taken as the power amplifier design.The mainstream process properties are analyzed,and a 2 push 42-stage power amplifier is obtained.Four transistors are used to built.we select OMMIC PDK,and the final stage uses four-way transistor power synthesis.The co-simulation based on the Momentμm layout shows that in the 24.75-27.5GHz frequency band,the saturated output power reaches 38d Bm,the linear gain reaches 15d B,the PAE is greater than 28.5%,the IM3 is less than-36d Bc when the backoff is 8d B,and the chip area is 2.512×2.34mm².