Title :
X-to-K band broadband watt-level power amplifier using stacked-FET unit cells
Author :
Park, Youngrak ; Kim, Youngmin ; Choi, Wooyeol ; Woo, Jungrin ; Kwon, Youngwoo
Author_Institution :
Dept. of EECS, Seoul Nat. Univ., Seoul, South Korea
Abstract :
A broadband watt-level stacked-FET power amplifier (PA) has been developed using 0.15 μm GaAs pHEMT´s. A triple-stacked FET structure is used as a unit cell to combine RF voltage swings to achieve high output power and broad bandwidth at the same time. Special care has been taken to solve thermal and instability problems of stacked-FET cells for watt-level applications as well as to optimize the subsequent power combiner for bandwidth. The fabricated PA shows a peak power of 33.7 dBm with a power added efficiency (PAE) of 29.5% at frequency of 18 GHz, and higher than 32 dBm output power from 10 to 21 GHz. The fractional 3 dB output power bandwidth is 84%.
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; field effect transistors; low-power electronics; power HEMT; power amplifiers; RF voltage swings; X-to-K band broadband watt-level power amplifier; efficiency 29.5 percent; frequency 18 GHz; pHEMT; power added efficiency; size 0.15 mum; stacked-FET unit cells; Bandwidth; Broadband amplifiers; Gain; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Transistors; Broadband; K-band; Power amplifier; Stacked-FET;
Conference_Titel :
Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC), 2011 IEEE
Conference_Location :
Baltimore, MD
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-8293-1
Electronic_ISBN :
1529-2517
DOI :
10.1109/RFIC.2011.5940620
