Design of a 0.5–30 GHz Darlington amplifier for microwave broadband applications

Author

Weng, Shou-Hsien ; Chang, Hong-Yeh ; Chiong, Chau-Ching

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Central Univ., Taoyuan, Taiwan

fYear

2010

fDate

23-28 May 2010

Firstpage

137

Lastpage

140

Abstract

Design of a 0.5-30 GHz Darlington amplifier using a 2 μm InGaP/GaAs HBT process for microwave broadband applications is presented in this paper. A device size ratio of the Darlington pair and a series inductor in the input are investigated to enhance the bandwidth of the Darlington pair. The proposed method is applied to the circuit design, and the bandwidth of Darlington amplifier is higher than one-thirds maximum oscillation frequency (f_max) of the device. The Darlington amplifier features a 3-dB bandwidth of from 0.5 to 29.7 GHz with an average small signal gain of 10.5 dB. This work demonstrates the highest figure of merit (FOM) among all the HBT Darlington amplifiers so far.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; amplifiers; gallium arsenide; heterojunction bipolar transistors; indium compounds; inductors; Darlington amplifier; Darlington pair; InGaP-GaAs; InGaP/GaAs HBT; bandwidth 0.5 GHz to 29.7 GHz; frequency 0.5 GHz to 30 GHz; gain 10.5 dB; maximum oscillation frequency; microwave broadband application; series inductor; size 2 micron; Bandwidth; Broadband amplifiers; Circuit synthesis; Frequency; Gain; Gallium arsenide; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Inductors; Microwave amplifiers; Microwave devices; Darlington amplifier; HBT;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest (MTT), 2010 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Anaheim, CA

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-6056-4

Electronic_ISBN

0149-645X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2010.5518254

Filename

5518254