Novel Current Sharing Concept Improves Efficiency of Broadband Feedback Amplifiers

This paper describes the concept of current sharing in order to reduce the current consumption of hybrid MIC broadband amplifiers and improve the overall efficiency of the subsystems that employ the amplifiers. Current sharing technique was implemented on a 2-18 GHz cascaded two-stage feedback amplifier and a 2-4 GHz balanced amplifier. The experimental results presented demonstrated that the current sharing concept drastically reduces the current consumption by 50 percent without compromising the amplifier performance in any way. The consequence of this is a two-fold improvement in the power-added efficiency.