Abstract
This paper presents a broadband amplifier MMIC based on 0.5 µm InP double-heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) technology. The proposed common-emitter amplifier contains five stages, and bias circuits are used in the matching network to obtain stable high gain in a broadband range. The measurement results demonstrate a peak gain of 19.5 dB at 146 GHz and a 3 dB bandwidth of 56–161 GHz (relative bandwidth of 96.8%). The saturation output power achieves 5.9 and 6.5 dBm at 94 and 140 GHz, respectively. The 1 dB compression output power is −4.7 dBm with an input power of −23 dBm at 94 GHz. The proposed amplifier has a compact chip size of 1.2 × 0.7 mm2, including DC and RF pads.
Highlights
Wang, B.; Sun, Y.; Cheng, W.; Zhou, Beijing Key Laboratory of Millimeter Wave and Terahertz Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Chongqing Microelectronics Center, Chongqing 401332, China
This paper presents a five-stage wideband common-emitter amplifier that incorporates the bias circuit into the matching network and obtains a maximum gain of 19.5 dB
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the proposed common-emitter amplifier has the highest relative bandwidth (RB) in this frequency band based on the 0.5 μm InP double-heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) process
Summary
Broadband amplifiers play an important role in high-resolution radar systems, highdata-rate communication systems, and measuring instruments. The cascode structure is another commonly used topology for designing broadband amplifiers, and it is often used as a basic unit to form a DA to increase its gain [3]. Because of the narrow-band characteristics of the matching network, the common-emitter (CE) structure is considered unsuitable for broadband amplifier design [7,8,9]. This paper presents a five-stage wideband common-emitter amplifier that incorporates the bias circuit into the matching network and obtains a maximum gain of 19.5 dB at 146 GHz with a 3 dB bandwidth of 56–161 GHz. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the proposed common-emitter amplifier has the highest relative bandwidth (RB) in this frequency band based on the 0.5 μm InP DHBT process.
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