Ruiz H. Linear CMOS RF Power Amplifiers. A Complete Design Workflow 2014

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The great spread of wireless technologies that is now observed reflects the interest in greater connectivity and pushes the development of portable devices that are able to connect to these emerging wireless technologies. Portable devices, then, need to offer increasing connectivity capabilities while maintaining their performance in terms of size and autonomy. Therefore, portable devices must further reduce not only their power consumption but also the size of their electronics. In other words, high performance, low cost, and highly integrated Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RF ICs) are increasingly required by the consumer electronics industry. CMOS integrated technology has played an important role in this wireless explosion due to its high functionality, integration capabilities, and low cost. Consequently, power amplifiers (PAs) implemented in standard CMOS processes, which offer performance close to that found in more expensive technologies, such as GaAs, are highly attractive. This is not only because CMOS technologies are extensively currently used in RF ICs implementations but also because CMOS PAs may offer low cost and high integration characteristics. However, the PA is still an RF component that has not been completely integrated within the whole transceiver due to the existing trade-off between high-performance and high integration characteristics. If high-performance PAs are required, designers focus on expensive processes that prevent PAs from being implemented in low cost, highly integrated devices. Conversely, if high integration is desired, achieving high-linearity and high-efficiency CMOS PAs is still a challenge. In addition to this, PAs have a direct impact on transceiver performance because the PA power consumption may easily make up 50 % of the overall power consumption of the transceiver, meaning that a high-performance PA is crucial