A Power Amplifier for Electronic Photonic Integrated D-Band Radar Applications

In this work, a 3-stage power amplifier (PA) is implemented on an electronic photonic integrated circuit (EPIC) semiconductor technology. While silicon photonics are being found extensive usage in communication data center applications, there is a lack of research on their performance in wireless communication, radar, and sensing applications. This work describes the development and the evaluation of a power amplifier using IHP SiGe 250 nm BiCMOS EPIC technology. 5.5 dBm saturated output power was measured while the maximum power gain is 24.9 dB at 122.3 GHz and the 3 dB gain bandwidth is between 114 GHz to 134 GHz which is sufficient to cover ISM Band applications. The power amplifier consumes 157 mW and occupies 800 µm × 300 µm core area and the total chip area is 1250 µm × 580 µm.