Bandwidth enhancement of cascode distributed amplifiers using inductive peaking technique and modified m-derived network

Bandwidth enhancement of cascode distributed amplifiers (DAs) is described in this paper. A modified m-derived network and inductive peaking technique are adopted to enhance the bandwidth of the DAs. The cascode gain cell is employed to improve gain bandwidth. 2- and 8-stage fully integrated DAs in a 0.5-μm GaAs enhancement- and depletion-mode high electron-mobility transistor (E/D-mode HEMT) technology are presented using the proposed design methodology. The measured bandwidths of the 2- and 8-stage DAs are 43.6 and 38.5 GHz with group delay variations of within 15 and 26 ps, and the measured output power 1-dB compress point (P_1dB) are 0 and 13 dBm, respectively.