Accurate prediction of the small-signal gain of the HBT dual-fed distributed amplifier

The benefits of the MESFET dual-fed distributed amplifier over the conventional distributed amplifier (DA), both in small and large-signal operation, have previously been reported. Recent interest in the heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) DA has led to consideration of the HBT in the dual-fed configuration. It has been found that the previously proposed equation, developed to predict the small-signal gain of the MESFET dual-fed DA, is inaccurate when applied to the HBT dual-fed DA. This paper describes an expression which gives better agreement with the simulated performance of such an amplifier.<>