Figure of Merit for RF-Power Amplifiers (PA)

Power Amplifiers are key components for wireless systems. They have to deliver the required transmission power
with a high linearity to minimize adjacent channel power. Especially for battery operated applications, desired
output power has to be delivered at minimum DC-Power.
Until mid-90’s, PA’s were Silicon bipolar devices for low frequencies and III/V based devices for higher
frequencies. But in recent years the trend versus system integration resulted in an increasing number of
publications about PA’s. But still CMOS PA’s are in research topic rather than used in commercial products.

There is no established Figure Of Merit (FOM) for power amplifiers published in literature. The FOM should take
into account the key parameters of the amplifiers like output power (P OUT), power gain (G), operating frequency
(fC), linearity (in terms of IP3) and the power-added-efficiency (PAE). Unfortunately linearity strongly depends on
the operating class of the amplifiers, which makes it difficult to compare amplifiers of different classes. Therefore,
our proposed FOM considers only the 4 main important parameters: Output power, power gain, frequency and
power-added-efficiency. Due to the 20 dB/decade roll-off nature of the PA’s RF-gain (most CMOS-PAs are
operated in that area currently, using DC-gain for applications far below fT would result in a slightly increased
slope), the frequency was included quadratic. The following logarithmic representation with power in dBm, gain in
dB, fC in GHz and PAE (absolute) is proposed for benchmarking power amplifiers.

FOM = POUT [dBm] + G [dB] + 20 log ( fC [GHz] ) + 10 log (PAE)

Figure 1 shows the FOM of Silicon-PAs gathered from literature. For the best in class amplifiers, the FOM
increases with about 1.5 dB/year. Extrapolating this slope, an estimation for future technology requirements in
terms of fMAX , VBR and inductor’s Q can be derived. Device speed obviously is necessary for high frequency
operation. As PA’s have to deliver power, decreasing breakdown voltages result in higher currents. In order to get
those currents out of the device and to match the PA to its external load, high-Q metalisation is necessary. Table 1
summarizes the FOM and the technology demands for PAs from 2000 until 2014.

50

45

40
FOM [dB]

35

30

25

20
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
year

Figure 1: FOM for silicon power amplifiers

year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2008 2011 2014
lG [nm] 165 150 130 120 110 100 70 50 35
FOM [dB] 44.0 45.5 47.0 48.5 50.0 51.5 56.0 60.5 65.0
VBR [V] 3.3 3.3 3.3 2.5 2.5 2.5 1.8 1.8 1.5
fMAX [GHz] 28 32 35 40 50 60 120 180 250
Q 10 10 10 16 16 16 20 20 25

Table 1: FOM and technology demands for power amplifiers

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