Print Email Facebook Twitter Design of Current-Mode RF/mm-wave Front-Ends Title Design of Current-Mode RF/mm-wave Front-Ends Author Hoogelander, Martijn (TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science) Contributor de Vreede, L.C.N. (mentor) Alavi, S.M. (graduation committee) Fan, Q. (graduation committee) van Staveren, Arie (mentor) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Date 2021-01-15 Abstract This thesis investigates the performance limits and design challenges of two current-mode front-end concepts that target WiFi and mm-wave 5G applications, respectively. The first concept is a power amplifier (PA), which operates at 2.4GHz and is driven by a direct-digital RF modulator (DDRM). A design for the PA, which also includes a parallel-combining transformer (PCT), was proposed, taped and tested in the QUBiC Gen8 technology of NXP Semiconductors. The measured results yield a peak output power of 27dBm, power efficiency of 20%, and an adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) of -33.05dBc. In the other concept, the DDRM drives a power mixer (PMIX) which up-converts the DDRM signal to mm-wave frequencies. For the PMIX-based front-end, multiple linearity enhancement techniques were proposed and evaluated using simulations. For both current-mode front-end concepts, an extensive analysis on the theoretical output power and power efficiency limit was performed. Although current-mode operation has a high linearity potential, fully reaching this potential turns out not to be trivial, due to various device non-idealities and imperfect impedance matching. Subject Mixerpower amplifierSiGe BiCMOSintermodulationbalunpctEfficiencylinearity To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:732e2708-7357-44da-91c8-d2e29e8e006c Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights © 2021 Martijn Hoogelander Files PDF MSc_Thesis_Martijn_Hoogel ... _Final.pdf 3.66 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:732e2708-7357-44da-91c8-d2e29e8e006c/datastream/OBJ/view