High efficiency reconfigurable class-F power amplifier at 2.4 GHz in CMOS-MEMS technology

Abstract

A novel reconfigurable CMOS class-F power amplifier is proposed in this paper which can adapt to load variations resulted from the hand effect on a mobile phone. Reconfigurability is achieved by using MEMS switches that are integrated monolithically in the CMOS technology along the rest of the circuit, reducing the cost and size. This structure integrates MEMS varactor inside CMOS technology that are built through a mask-less post-processing technique. Designed for 2.4GHz, for a load impedance of 50O, simulations results show that the power amplifier achieves a power added efficiency of 32.8% and a power gain of 12.9 dB, while delivering peak output power of 18.2 dBm. Simulation results for different load variations have been performed showing a great improvement in efficiency and output power by using the proposed structure. The total size of the fabricated chip is 1.6 mm x 1.6 mm.