A 1.1-Gbit/s 10-GHz Outphasing Modulator With 23-dBm Output Power and 60-dB Dynamic Range in 45-nm CMOS SOI

作者：Mehrjoo Mohammad S^*; Zihir Samet; Rebeiz Gabriel M; Buckwalter James F

来源：IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 2015, 63(7): 2289-2300.

DOI：10.1109/TMTT.2015.2435005

• Calibration
• high dynamic range (DR)
• linear amplification with nonlinear components (LINC)
• outphasing
• phase modulator
• polar

A 10-GHz outphasing modulator is implemented in a 45-nm CMOS silicon-on-insulator process. The modulator is designed to provide high linearity and can operate at high data rates by using 256-QAM while maintaining low error vector magnitude (EVM). Four high-speed 10-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs) are integrated with dual in-phase and quadrature upconverters. To deliver high output power to an off-chip power amplifier, stacked field-effect transistor current buffers are used to isolate the modulator from the load and mitigate device breakdown. As a result, this modulator delivers 23 dBm to a differential 100-load. The high-resolution DACs provide a fine control of the phase between the outphased signals and support more than 60 dB of dynamic range and power steps smaller than 1 dB over the entire output power range. The outphasing modulator demonstrates an EVM of 2.2% at 80 Mbit/s and an EVM of 3.4% at 1.1 Gbit/s for 256-QAM. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an outphasing modulator operating above 1 Gb/s.

• 出版日期2015-7