A U-band broadband power amplifier MMIC in 100 nm AlGaN/GaN HEMT technology

Author

Schwantuschke, Dirk ; Bruckner, P. ; Quay, Ruediger ; Mikulla, Michael ; Ambacher, Oliver ; Kallfass, I.

Author_Institution

High Freq. Device & Circuits, Fraunhofer Inst. for Appl. Solid State Phys. (IAF), Freiburg, Germany

fYear

2012

Firstpage

703

Lastpage

706

Abstract

The design and manufacture of a three-stage broadband power amplifier is presented in this paper. The amplifier MMIC is realized using AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with a gate-length of 100 nm in a grounded coplanar transmission line technology. A small-signal gain of over 20 dB was measured in the frequency range from 38 to 62 GHz (U-band) for the designed amplifier. This corresponds to a very high small-signal bandwidth of over 48 %. Related to the current-gain cutoff frequency, the bandwidth of the amplifier is 30 % of f_T and the gain-bandwidth-product is approximately five times f_T. Furthermore, a high continuous-wave saturated output power of 25.8 dBm (380 mW) and a high saturated power density of over 1 W/mm in the output stage are provided by the MMIC.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; MMIC power amplifiers; aluminium compounds; coplanar transmission lines; gallium compounds; high electron mobility transistors; wide band gap semiconductors; wideband amplifiers; AlGaN-GaN; HEMT technology; U-band broadband power amplifier MMIC; amplifier bandwidth; current-gain cutoff frequency; frequency 38 GHz to 62 GHz; gain-bandwidth-product; grounded coplanar transmission line technology; high continuous-wave saturated output power; high saturated power density; size 100 nm; small-signal bandwidth; small-signal gain; three-stage broadband power amplifier design; three-stage broadband power amplifier manufacture; Aluminum gallium nitride; Broadband amplifiers; Gain; Gallium nitride; HEMTs; MMICs; Power amplifiers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC), 2012 7th European

Conference_Location

Amsterdam

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2302-4

Electronic_ISBN

978-2-87487-026-2

Type

conf

Filename

6483897