Miniaturisation of a Band-X Monolithic GaAs Amplifier

Reducing the area occupied by microwave monolithic integrated circuits is a necessity to decrease the cost of these circuits. A reduction in area can be obtained with circuit configurations comprising a minimum of inductances and by using spiral inductors. When a circuit is compacted, the coupling between radiating elements such as the inductances has also to be taken into account. An amplifier working from 2 to 10GHz with a measured gain of 5.8 +- 0.4dB is presented. The efforts to reduce the area have led to a surface of 0.16mm² and therefore an integration density of 36dB/mm².