Kyoungwoon Kim, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, won first prize at the prestigious 2014 Asia Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC) in Japan.
Kim, whose advisor and co-author is Dr. Cam Nguyen, the TI Professor II in Analog Engineering, won for his paper, “Design of a K-Band Power Amplifier for High Gain, Output Power and Efficiency on 0.18-µm SiGe BiCMOS Process.”
In his paper Kim presents the design of a K-band 0.18 µm SiGe BiCMOS power amplifier with unprecedented performance. The power amplifier achieves 37.5-39.5 dB of small-signal gain, 18.6-20.6 dBm of saturated output power, and 18-29 percent of PAE over the entire K-band (18-26.5 GHz). Specifically at 24 GHz, it achieves 19.4 dBm output power, 22.3 percent PAE, and 37.6-dB gain.
Kim received a master's degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 2006, and is currently working toward his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering. His current research interests include silicon-based RF, microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits and systems.
The APMC is the largest microwave conference in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing together international researchers, engineers and students to showcase the most advanced research and development in microwave technologies. It is organized and sponsored by The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE).