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

fYear

2011

fDate

5-7 June 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

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;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC), 2011 IEEE

Conference_Location

Baltimore, MD

ISSN

1529-2517

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-8293-1

Electronic_ISBN

1529-2517

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.2011.5940620

Filename

5940620