A fully integrated low-power CMOS power amplifier for biomedical applications

There is an emerging need for fully integrated power amplifiers (PAs) for very low-power implanted wireless transceivers. A fully integrated power amplifier circuit operating at 2.45 GHz is presented in this work. The layout of the circuit was designed carefully. Optimization was performed on the interconnections between the circuit components, which resulted in minimized parasitics of the on-silicon metal wires and hence very good performance. Measurement results show that at 1.4 V supply, the PA delivers an output power of 4.5 mW with a 28.5 % power-added efficiency (PAE) and a gain of 19.5 dB. With this performance, the circuit has proved to be well-suited for low-power biomedical implanted transceiver systems.