A monolithic 3 to 40 GHz HEMT distributed amplifier

A monolithic 3-to-40-GHz distributed amplifier has been developed using 0.25- mu m HEMTs (high-electron-mobility transistors) with mushroom gate profile, as an active device. This amplifier consists of five 0.25- mu m HEMTs with variable gate widths and on-chip biasing circuit. The chip size is 2.3*0.8 mm. A measured gain of 8 dB from 3 to 33 GHz and a measured midband noise figure of 3 dB from 10 to 30 GHz were achieved. The authors note that these are the best reported results for an amplifier over this bandwidth.<<ETX>>