A 1/2 watt high linearity and wide bandwidth PHEMT driver amplifier MMIC for millimeter-wave applications

Abstract

This paper presents a high linearity and wide bandwidth driver/power amplifier MMIC, which covered entire Q-band. The MMIC amplifier was designed for 38GHz Point-to-Point radio application using TriQuint's 0.15 μm power GaAs PHEMT technology. This balanced three-stage power amplifier, with chip size of 2.9 mm2 on 100 μm GaAs substrate, achieved 27 dBm P1dB output power with nominal 18 dB small signal gain over 33 - 40 GHz. The RF performance of this power amplifier can be further extended to cover frequencies of 33 - 48 GHz. Meanwhile, high output linearity was measured with lower than - 34 dBc third order intermodulation (EM3) at 19 dBm per tone output power level. This state-of-the-art millimeter wave power amplifier sets the benchmark of linearity and bandwidth for a single MMIC chip reported to date among Q-band medium power amplifiers. ©2006 IEEE.