Reliability study of a low-voltage Class-E power amplifier in 130nm CMOS

This paper presents reliability measurements of a differential Class-E power amplifier (PA) operating at 850MHz in 130nm CMOS. The RF performance of five samples was tested. At 1.1V, the PAs deliver +20.4–21.5dBm of output power with drain efficiencies and power-added efficiencies of 56–64% and 46–51%, respectively. After a continuous long-term test of 240 hours at elevated supply voltage of 1.4V, the output power dropped about 0.7dB.