mmWave Spatial-Temporal Single Harmonic Switching Transmitter Arrays for High back-off Beamforming Efficiency

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel spatial-temporal single harmonic switching transmitter array that significantly improves power back-off efficiency in mmWave beamforming, validated through CMOS simulation at 77 GHz.

Contribution

It proposes a co-designed electromagnetic and circuit architecture that enhances back-off efficiency using temporal domain techniques, combined with conventional methods.

Findings

Achieves 24.2% peak drain efficiency at 77 GHz

Provides 57-190% efficiency improvements at various back-off levels

Validates the design through CMOS simulation results

Abstract

This paper presents a spatial-temporal single harmonic switching (STHS) transmitter array architecture with enhanced efficiency in the power back-off (PBO) region. STHS is an electromagnetic and circuit co-designed and jointly optimized transmitter array that realizes beamforming and back-off power generation at the same time. The temporal dimension is originally added in STHS to achieve back-off efficiency enhancement, which can be combined with conventional power back-off enhancement methods such as Doherty amplifiers and envelope tracking. The design is validated through a simulation of a two-stage power amplifier in 65-nm CMOS at 77 GHz, which achieves a peak drain efficiency (DE) of 24.2%, a 22% DE at 3-dB PBO, 16% DE at 6-dB PBO, and 10.2% at 9-dB PBO. The efficiency exhibits a 57% improvement at 3-dB PBO, 100% improvement at 6-dB PBO, and 190% improvement at 9-dB PBO compared with class A/B amplifier.