A Trimmable Cascaded Distributed Amplifier With 1.6 THz Gain-Bandwidth Product

Author

Fritsche, David ; Tretter, Gregor ; Carta, Corrado ; Ellinger, Frank

Author_Institution

Dept. of Circuit Design & Network Theor., Tech. Univ. Dresden, Dresden, Germany

Volume

5

Issue

6

fYear

2015

Firstpage

1094

Lastpage

1096

Abstract

This letter presents a distributed amplifier fabricated in a 0.13- μm SiGe BiCMOS technology for applications with large bandwidth requirements. The main design goals of large bandwidth and high gain are achieved by cascading three bandwidth-optimized traveling-wave amplifier stages. The termination resistance variations, which have large influence on the gain, are compensated by implementing electrically trimmable resistors. Measurements of the amplifier trimmed for optimum gain flatness show a gain of 18.7 dB over a 3-dB bandwidth of 180 GHz. To the authors´ best knowledge, the resulting gain-bandwidth product of 1.6 THz is the highest reported to date.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MIMIC; distributed amplifiers; travelling wave amplifiers; SiGe; bandwidth 180 GHz; bandwidth-optimized traveling-wave amplifier stage; electrically-trimmable resistors; gain 18.7 dB; gain-bandwidth product; optimum gain flatness; silicon-germanium BiCMOS technology; size 0.13 mum; termination resistance variation; trimmable cascaded distributed amplifier; Bandwidth; Gain; Integrated circuits; Noise measurement; Power transmission lines; Resistance; Resistors; BiCMOS integrated circuits; broadband amplifiers; distributed amplifiers; millimeter-wave integrated circuits;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Terahertz Science and Technology, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

2156-342X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TTHZ.2015.2482940

Filename

7298467