A 42 GHz Amplifier Designed Using Common-Gate Load Pull

Author

Mahon, Simon J.

Author_Institution

Macom Technol. Solutions, Sydney Design Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia

fYear

2011

fDate

16-19 Oct. 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

A new technique is proposed for the design of linear and power amplifiers at mm-wave frequencies where load-pull of large transistor output cells is difficult. The technique transforms the load-pull data on a small, standard foundry transistor layout to a pair of common-gate contours for the intrinsic device; one gate-source and one gate-drain. These are then recombined as an intrinsic drain-source contour for a larger and arbitrary transistor layout. A driver amplifier for the ETSI 42 GHz point-to-point radio band has been designed using the proposed technique. The fabricated MMIC consumes 1.5 watts and has a gain of 25 dB, and OIP3 of 36 dBm, OIP5 of 28 dBm and P1dB of 23 dBm which is believed to be the best reported result to date.

Keywords

MMIC power amplifiers; millimetre wave power amplifiers; millimetre wave transistors; ETSI point-to-point radio band; MM-wave frequencies; MMIC; common-gate contours; common-gate load pull; frequency 42 GHz; gain 25 dB; gate-drain; gate-source; intrinsic device; large transistor output cells; linear amplifiers; power amplifiers; Fingers; Gain; Impedance; Logic gates; Power amplifiers; Semiconductor device measurement; Transistors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium (CSICS), 2011 IEEE

Conference_Location

Waikoloa, HI

ISSN

1550-8781

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-711-5

Electronic_ISBN

1550-8781

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CSICS.2011.6062473

Filename

6062473