A 180-GHz Power Amplifier in SiGe HBT Process

A 180-GHz power amplifier (PA) in SiGe HBT technology with a $f_{\text{max}}/f_{\mathrm{T}}$ of 280 GHz / 240 GHz is presented in this paper. The power amplifier is based on a 2-way power combination structure and each way is consist of a three-stage single-ended Cascode configuration. According to the simulation results, the PA exhibits a saturated power of 6.6dBm and the output referred 1-dB compression point(P 1dB ) is 4.37dBm at 180 GHz. The small-signal gain is within 7.5–9dB from 175 GHz to 185 GHz. The 2-way power combiner is realized using T-line that has low insertion loss.