Bias circuits and methods for silicon-based amplifier architectures that are tolerant of supply and bias voltage variations, bias current variations, and transistor stack height, and compensate for poor output resistance characteristics. Embodiments include power amplifiers and low-noise amplifiers that utilize a cascode reference circuit to bias the final stages of a cascode amplifier under the control of a closed loop bias control circuit. The closed loop bias control circuit ensures that the current in the cascode reference circuit is approximately equal to a selected multiple of a known current value by adjusting the gate bias voltage to the final stage of the cascode amplifier. The final current through the cascode amplifier is a multiple of the current in the cascode reference circuit, based on a device scaling factor representing the relative sizes of the transistor devices in the cascode amplifier and in the cascode reference circuit.

A self-setting power supply monitors a supply current drawn by a power amplifier and sets a supply voltage based on the supply current to achieve efficient power operation. In order to maintain operation of the power amplifier above minimum operating conditions, the self-setting power supply sets the supply voltage to the minimum operating voltage when the supply current drops below a threshold bias current. When the supply current is above the threshold bias current, the self-setting power supply adjusts the supply voltage approximately proportionally to the supply current to maintain approximately constant gain of the power amplifier.

An amplifying circuit includes a reference voltage generating circuit, a common-mode voltage conversion circuit, a common-mode negative feedback circuit, and an amplifying sub-circuit. The reference voltage generating circuit generates a first reference voltage, a second reference voltage, and a reference common-mode voltage according to a post-stage common-mode voltage. The common-mode voltage conversion circuit converts the pre-stage output differential signal into a differential input signal according to the reference common-mode voltage. The common-mode negative feedback circuit generates a control voltage to quickly establish a common-mode negative feedback of the amplifying sub-circuit, wherein the first reference voltage and the second reference voltage are used to cancel a baseline signal of the pre-stage output differential signal. The amplifying circuit can eliminate the baseline signal, convert the common-mode voltage and quickly establish the common-mode negative feedback.

An output circuit includes a first transistor, a second transistor, an operational amplifier that outputs a control voltage, and a switch circuit that controls voltage output in accordance with a control signal. When the control signal is in a first state, the switch circuit supplies the control voltage to the gate of the first transistor to turn on the first transistor and electrically connects the drain of first transistor to the operational amplifier so that a first output voltage is output from the drain of the first transistor. When the control signal is in a second state, the switch circuit supplies the control voltage to the gate of the second transistor to turn on the second transistor and electrically connects the drain of the second transistor to the operational amplifier so that a second output voltage is output from the drain of the second transistor.

Bias arrangements for amplifiers are disclosed. An example bias arrangement for an amplifier includes a bias circuit, configured to produce a bias signal for the amplifier; a linearization circuit, configured to improve linearity of the amplifier by modifying the bias signal produced by the bias circuit to produce a modified bias signal to be provided to the amplifier; and a coupling circuit, configured to couple the bias circuit and the linearization circuit. Providing separate bias and linearization circuits coupled to one another by a coupling circuit allows separating a linearization operation from a biasing loop to overcome some drawbacks of prior art bias arrangements that utilize a single biasing loop.

An example current mirror arrangement includes a current mirror circuit, configured to receive an input current signal at an input transistor Q1 and output a mirrored signal at an output transistor Q2. The arrangement further includes a semi-cascoding circuit that includes transistors Q3, Q4, and a two-terminal passive network. The transistor Q3 is coupled to, and forms a cascode with, the output transistor Q2. The transistor Q4 is coupled to the transistor Q3. The base/gate of the transistor Q3 is coupled to a bias voltage Vref, and the base/gate of the transistor Q4 is coupled to a bias voltage Vref1 via the two-terminal passive network. Nonlinearity of the output current from such a current mirror arrangement may be reduced by selecting appropriate impedance of the two-terminal passive network and selecting appropriate bias voltages Vref and Vref1.

Various embodiments of the present invention relate to a power amplification device and method, wherein the power amplification device can comprise: a power amplifier; a switch mode converter for controlling a bias of the power amplifier; a comparator for providing a switching signal to the switch mode converter according to an envelope signal; and a control unit for determining whether a switching frequency of the switch mode converter is within a specific band and applying an offset to the switching frequency so as to deviate from the specific band if the switching frequency of the switch mode converter is within the specific band. Various other embodiments can be carried out.

Methods and devices are described for compensating an effect of aging due to, for example, hot carrier injection, or other device degradation mechanisms affecting a current flow, in an RF amplifier. In one case a replica circuit is used to sense the aging of the RF amplifier and adjust a biasing of the RF amplifier accordingly.

An embodiment of a radio-frequency (RF) device includes at least one transistor, a package, and a surface-mountable capacitor. The package contains the at least one transistor and includes at least one termination. The surface-mountable capacitor is coupled in a shunt configuration between the at least one transistor and a power supply terminal of the device to decouple the at least one transistor from a power supply.

This invention eliminates the need for “capacitor coupling” or “transformer coupling,” and the associated undesirable parasitic capacitance and inductance associated with these coupling techniques when designing high frequency (˜60 GHz) circuits. At this frequency, the distance between two adjacent stages needs to be minimized. A resonant circuit in series with the power or ground leads is used to isolate a biasing signal from a high frequency signal. The introduction of this resonant circuit allows a first stage to be “directly coupled” to a next stage using a metallic trace. The “direct coupling” technique passes both the high frequency signal and the biasing voltage to the next stage. The “direct coupling” approach overcomes the large die area usage when compared to either the “AC coupling” or “transformer coupling” approach since neither capacitors nor transformers are required to transfer the high frequency signals between stages.