Author:
Sabahattin Doruk Yıldön
Year:
2021
Abstract:
Power amplifiers are one of the most important parts of the radar and communication systems. In order to satisfy the design specifications, the power amplifiers must provide a suitable output power, high gain, efficiency and linearity at the same time. The frequency at which this RFIC Power Amplifier operates is 24 GHz and it is an ISM Radio Band. It is used by Earth Expoloration Satellite Service (EESS) in spaceborne remote sensing applications such as atmospheric water vapour measurement, vertically integrated water content of the atmosphere and sea surface temperature measurements.
This work is based on 0.25-μm GaAs pHEMT process. A 24 GHz RFIC Power Amplifier that is designed and simulated. The power amplifier is designed as a combination network with Class-AB topology. This RFIC Power Amplifier design achieves Power Gain of 8.08 dB, Power Added Efficiency of 37.3%, P1dB of 24.82 dBm, P3dB of 25.37 dBm and PSAT of 28.14 dBm with the size of 3.36 mm2 (1.2 mm x 2.8 mm).
In this project, classes of power amplifiers, technologies have been examined and compared. At the beginning, the s-parameters of the sample power amplifier were examined and the topology was decided to be Class-AB. The GaAs pHEMT process, was chosen because it has been shown the most suitable technology to provide the high output power and best stability although it is expensive. The electromagnetic simulation and layout design of the RFIC Power Amplifier are made on AWR Design Environment software.