Abstract

In this paper, an analytical tool of uniform 3D gainspace approach is proposed to analyze the impact of the lossy, linear and reciprocal embedding networks, as well as the lossy matching networks for near-fmax embedded amplifiers. Based on the uniform gain space approach, a super-gain-boosting technique, which involves the employment of the cross conductance to the differential pair as well as Y/Z-embedding networks is thoroughly proposed to significantly boost the power gain. Compared to the conventional gain boosting techniques, the proposed can significantly boost the Mason's U of a transistor, but also further obtain gain improvement benefiting from the intuitive uniform 3D gain-space approach. Finally, to validate the proposed analytical approach, a three-stage amplifier is implemented in a 65nm CMOS process based on the proposed super gain-boosting technique and over-push gain-boosting technique. The three-stage amplifier demonstrates a measured Psat of-1.95dBm and a maximum PAE of 2.87% at 189GHz, along with a maximum power gain of 32.1dB.