Design of a Fully Integrated CMOS Self-Testable RF Power Amplifier using a Thermal Sensor
Résumé
This paper presents a wideband RF power amplifier (PA) dedicated to 2GHz applications integrating a contact-less temperature sensor that allows on-chip observation and testing of the PA. Indeed, based on the static and dynamic local temperature changes caused by the PA operation, the thermal sensor can sense parameters such as output power or efficiency. This principle is applied to a 65nm CMOS PA with an OCP1 of 21dBm. We demonstrate that the output voltage of the thermal sensor follows the PA efficiency under single tone and multi-tone input signal conditions.