Single-chip RF Front-end MMIC using InGaAs E/DpHEMT for 3.5 GHz WiMAX applications

A single chip RF front-end MMIC is designed, developed and measured for 3.5 GHz WiMax application. The proposed MMIC integrated PA, LNA and SPDT switch by utilizing the cost-effective 0.5 mum InGaAs E/D-pHEMT process of WINs Corp.. In this paper, D-pHEMT are applied for switch designed and E-pHEMT are applied for LNA and PA design. The LNA exhibits 1.8 dB of noise figure, 16.7 dB of gain, -10 dBm of input PldB and 3 dBm of IIP3. The SPDT switch shows 0.8 dB of insertion loss, 20 dB of isolation and 27.4 dBm of input PldB. The PA demonstrates the 29dBm of output PldB, 2.7% of EVM at 24.4 dBm with 25.6 dB of gain and over 15% of PAE. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first solution on 3.5 GHz WiMax PA, LNA and SPDT switch integrated in a single chip with InGaAs E/D-pHEMT.