This paper presents a 5.8 GHz differential cascode power amplifier for an over-the-air wireless power transfer application. Over-the-air wireless power transfer provides a variety of benefits in several applications such as the Internet of Things and medical implantation applications. The proposed PA features two fully differentially active stages with a custom-designed transformer to provide a single-ended output. The custom-made transformer shows a high quality factor, as high as 11.6 and 11.2 for the primary and secondary sides at 5.8 GHz. Fabricated using a standard 180 nm CMOS process, the amplifier achieves input and output matching of -14.7 dB and -29.7 dB, respectively. To achieve a high power level and efficiency, accurate optimization through power matching, Power Added Efficiency (PAE), and the design of the transformer are carried out while the supply voltage is limited to 1.8 V. Measurement results show a 20 dBm output power with a PAE as high as 32.5%, which makes the PA suitable for application, and it can be implanted while arrayed with various antenna arrays. Finally, a FOM is introduced to compare the performance of the work with similar works in the literature.
Keywords: 5.8 GHz; custom-made transformer; over-the-air wireless power transfer (WPT); power amplifier.