4 W, 7-12 GHz, compact CB HBT MMIC power amplifier

Extremely compact, broadband, heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) power amplifiers (PAs) were demonstrated with excellent performance. Common base (CB) HBTs were used in three single-stage broadband power amplifier designs, 1 W, 2 W, and 4 W, covering 7 to 11 GHz. In addition, a 1-W common emitter (CE) HBT linear amplifier was studied for its intermodulation property for communication application. The CB HBT PAs show good scaling relation in output power level. The peak power added efficiency is 40% for both the 1-W and 2-W versions, and 34% for the 4-W version. The chip size is only 2.15 mm by 2.9 mm for the 4-W CB HBT power amplifier. The CE HBT PA provides 1-W saturated output power in class B operation. In class A linear operation, 0.4-W output power was achieved. A two-tone test showed that IM/sub 3/ is better than -20 dBc at 1-dB compression point.<<ETX>>

[1]  Camino Dos Rios.  Ultrahigh Power Efficiency Operation of Common-Emitter and Common-Base HBT's at 10 GHz , 1990 .

[2]  T. Kim,et al.  12 W monolithic X-band HBT power amplifier , 1992, IEEE 1992 Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Monolithic Circuits Symposium Digest of Papers.

[3]  N. H. Sheng,et al.  Ultrahigh power efficiency operation of common-emitter and common-base HBT's at 10 GHz , 1990 .

[4]  P. Asbeck,et al.  18 GHz high gain, high efficiency power operation of AlGaAs/GaAs HBT , 1990, IEEE International Digest on Microwave Symposium.

[5]  Robert M Gagliardi,et al.  Satellite Communications , 1984 .

[6]  John A. Higgins,et al.  High linearity power operation of AlGaAs/GaAs HBT at 10 GHz , 1992 .

[7]  R. Ramachandran,et al.  A high-efficiency HBT MMIC power amplifier , 1990, 12th Annual Symposium on Gallium Arsenide Integrated Circuit (GaAs IC).

[8]  John A. Higgins,et al.  0.7 W X-Ku-band high-gain, high-efficiency common base power HBT , 1991 .

[9]  John A. Higgins,et al.  Producibility and performance of the microwave power HBT , 1992, GaAs IC Symposium Technical Digest 1992.