High-Efficiency Silicon PAs for mm-Wave Radar Sensors

In this talk, we will present the recently developed silicon-based high-efficiency PAs for mm-wave radar sensors. We will start off by introducing applications and system level considerations for mm-wave radar sensors with a goal of deriving the PA design targets. The rest of the talk will cover the design methodologies and techniques to enable high-efficiency PAs at mm-wave radar frequencies. Specifically, we will discuss the recently proposed doubly-tuned transformer-based Class-E PA concept, which is better suited for mm-wave operation than the traditional Class-E design. We will present measured results in bulk CMOS and BiCMOS at 77GHz and 60GHz bands to demonstrate the proposed concepts and techniques.