Design and optimisation of high‐efficient class‐F ULP‐PA using envelope tracking supply bias control for long‐range low power wireless local area network IEEE 802.11ah standard using 65 nm CMOS technology

Abstract

Abstract This article presents the design and optimisation of a sub‐1 GHz class‐F ultra‐low power (ULP) power amplifier (PA) in 65 nm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology. An envelope tracking (ET) supply biasing technique is adopted to improve the efficiency of class‐F PA. The ET consist of a pre‐amp right before the detector in order to enhance the efficiency and save adequate amount of dc power consumption. The PA consists of two cascode cells terminated as class‐F with gate‐to‐drain feedback in order to enhance linearity and limit any harmonic component from the input signal. The novel design consumes a dc power of 3.75 mW, power added efficiency of 37.1%, operating at 915–925 MHz unlicensed band and total saturated output power of 22 dBm including 14 dBm power gain at PA, which qualifies under long‐range low power wireless local area network IEEE 802.11ah standard. The inductor‐less design for ET supply bias reduces the chip layout size to 0.13 mm2 only.

Keywords

• CMOS integrated circuits
• low‐power electronics
• UHF integrated circuits
• UHF power amplifiers
• wireless LAN