Abstract
A power-reconfigurable distributed amplifier (DA) is implemented using a 130 nm metamorphic high-electron mobility transistor (mHEMT) process. Using a mHEMT process with excellent high-frequency characteristics, output power and efficiency at high frequencies are improved compared with the existing power-reconfigurable distributed amplifiers. In this article, a gain cell switching technique is proposed as the power reconfiguration method for the distributed amplifier. The gain cell switching technique expands the gain bandwidth and power reconfigurability more than the conventional bias control. The proposed power-reconfigurable DA obtains a measured linear gain of 10.0–13.6 dB from 0.5 to 62.5 GHz and a measured output power of 20.2–21.5 dBm from 10 to 40 GHz. A measured power added efficiency (PAE) is 11.6–20.0% from 10 to 40 GHz. Under a low power mode (LPM), it obtains a measured linear gain of 4.4–7.1 dB from 0.5 to 65 GHz and a measured output power of 14.7–15.9 dBm from 10 to 40 GHz. At 10 GHz, a drain efficiency (DE) is 11.4% at 5.6 dB power back-off. This is 6.5% higher than the conventional DA or more than twice as high.
Highlights
With the development of wireless communication, many new high-frequency bands have been allocated as 3G mobile communication has been upgraded to 4G long-term evolution (LTE)
This trend will add the burden of putting many radio frequency (RF) components into the handset's limited form factor
In the proposed scheme, gain bandwidth was reduced in low power mode (LPM) and power back-off was only 4 dB or less, so there was a limit to the use of LPM
Summary
With the development of wireless communication, many new high-frequency bands have been allocated as 3G mobile communication has been upgraded to 4G long-term evolution (LTE). In the proposed scheme, gain bandwidth was reduced in low power mode (LPM) and power back-off was only 4 dB or less, so there was a limit to the use of LPM They had the drawback that output power and efficiency dropped sharply above 30GHz, which belongs to one of the 5G bands. Our mHEMT process was developed at Seoul National University [16] This approach improves output power and efficiency above 30 GHz. In addition, a gain cell-switching technique is proposed as a VOLUME XX, 2017. In the previous power-reconfigurable method, which is called the “double gate-bias control scheme,” output power and gain bandwidth under LPM are calculated through a load line analysis and overall gain equations, including transconductance (Gm) in a gain cell.
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