The Design of Fully Differential Power Amplifiers for IEEE 802.11a WLAN System Using Fully On-Chip and LTCC On-Package Integrate Approaches

• Main Authors: Wei-Chao Huang, 黃韋超
• Other Authors: Hsin-Chia Lu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/01840631704615970374

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 電子工程學研究所 === 94 === The purpose of this thesis is to present a power amplifier which can be used in IEEE 802.11a WLAN system. In this thesis, the power amplifier is implemented by two approaches, one uses fully on-chip integrated technique and another uses LTCC on-package integrated and flip-chip connection techniques. In order to investigate the difference between on-chip integrated PA and on-package integrated PA, these two amplifiers are built with the same topology. We adopt differential self-biased cascode topology to overcome the problems of hot carrier effect and break down effect when the power amplifier is operating in 23.2 dBm high output power. Accordingly, the differential self-biased cascode topology can improve the reliability of power amplifier significantly. Three-stage architecture is chosen in these power amplifiers for more than 20 dB high gain at 5 GHz. The passive part of on-package integrated PA is implemented by low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC), with inherently high quality factor, can improve the efficiency drastically. The replacement of PCB discrete passive components by multilayer LTCC embedded one makes the concept of system-on-a-package (SOP) real. Furthermore, the implementation of power amplifier with TSMC 0.18-μm CMOS process and 1.8 V DC supply voltage make it possible to integrate the IF and base-band circuits in a single chip.