A Novel VSWR-Protected and Controllable CMOS Class E Power Amplifier for Bluetooth Applications

TL;DR

This paper presents a differential CMOS class-E power amplifier with load mismatch protection and power control for Bluetooth, featuring a novel bias network and temperature compensation, achieving stable, controllable output power in 0.18um technology.

Contribution

Introduces a new controllable bias network with temperature compensation and load mismatch protection for CMOS class-E PAs in Bluetooth applications.

Findings

Output power controllable in 2dBm steps

Power output stable against temperature variations

Effective load mismatch protection implemented

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a differential class-E PA for Bluetooth applications in 0.18um CMOS technology with load mismatch protection and power control features. The breakdown induced by load mismatch can be avoided by attenuating the RF power to the final stage during over voltage conditions. Power control is realized by means of "open loop" techniques to regulate the power supply voltage, and a novel controllable bias network with temperature compensated is proposed, which allows a moderate power control slope (dB/V) to be achieved. Post-layout Simulation results show that the level of output power can be controlled in 2dBm steps; especially the output power in every step is quite insensitive to temperature variations.