A Broadband High-Efficiency SOI-CMOS PA Module for LTE/LTE-A Handset Applications

Abstract

This paper presents a broadband high-efficiency linear Doherty power amplifier (DPA) for LTE/LTE-A handset applications. The proposed PA is implemented in a 130nm SOI technology and packaged using flip-chip on a laminate substrate. At 2.5GHz, the PA shows a PAE of 44%, a power gain of 27dB, and an E-UTRA ACLR of −35dBc at 28dBm output power using a 10MHz LTE uplink signal without DPD. Moreover, the PA reaches a maximum FOM (PAE+|ACLR|) of 80 and maintains a FOM greater than 70 over 31% of fractional bandwidth around 2.3GHz without using DPD. When using DPD, the ACLR is improved by 10dB leading to a maximum FOM of 90. To the best of our knowledge, these performances represent the best linearity-efficiency performances compared to recently published LTE PAs for handset applications.