A review of advanced CMOS RF power amplifier architecture trends for low power 5G wireless networks

Abstract

The structure of the modern wireless network evolves rapidly and maturing 4G networks pave the way to next generation 5G communication. A tendency of shifting from traditional high-power tower-mounted base stations towards heterogeneous elements can be spotted, which is mainly caused by the increase of annual wireless users and devices connected to the network. The radio frequency (RF) power amplifier (PA) performance directly affects the efficiency of any transmitter, therefore, the emerging 5G cellular network requires new PA architectures with improved efficiency without sacrificing linearity. A review of the most promising reported RF PA architectures is presented in this article, emphasizing advantages, disadvantages and concluding with a quantitative comparison. The main scope of reviewed papers are PAs implemented in scalable complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) and SiGe BiCMOS processes with output powers suitable for portable wireless devices under 32 dBm (1.5 W) in the low- and high- 5G network frequency ranges.