Experiments of device failures in a planar nine-way metamaterial power-combined amplifier

The degradation characteristic of a planar nine-way metamaterial power-combined amplifier with device failures is investigated in this paper. The power-divider/combiner design is based on the metamaterial lens structure and is composed of positive refractive index material and zero refractive index (ZRI) material. Nine 1-W power amplifiers are inserted in the ZRI material to attain a nine-way power-combined amplifier. Due to its uniform isolation characteristics of the metamaterial power divider/combiner, the graceful degradation performance of this power-combined amplifier is shown to be independent of the amplifier failure sequence and is experimentally demonstrated.