A 4.2-to-5.4 GHz stacked GaAs HBT power amplifier for C-band applications

Abstract

Purpose Power amplifiers (PAs) play an important role in wireless communications because they dominate system performance. High-linearity broadband PAs are of great value for potential use in multi-band system implementation. The purpose of this paper is to present a cascode power amplifier architecture to achieve high power and high efficiency requirements for 4.2∼5.4 GHz applications. Design/methodology/approach A common emitter (CE) configuration with a stacked common base configuration of heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) is used to achieve high power. T-type matching network is used as input matching network. To increase the bandwidth, the output matching networks are implemented using the two L-networks. Findings By using the proposed method, the stacked PA demonstrates a maximum saturated output power of 26.2 dBm, a compact chip size of 1.17 × 0.59 mm2 and a maximum power-added efficiency of 46.3 per cent. The PA shows a wideband small signal gain with less than 3 dB variation over working frequency. The saturated output power of the proposed PA is higher than 25 dBm between 4.2 and 5.4 GHz. Originality/value The technology adopted for the design of the 4.2-to-5.4 GHz stacked PA is the 2-µm gallium arsenide HBT process. Based on the proposed method, a better power performance of 3 dB improvement can be achieved as compared with the conventional CE or common-source amplifier because of high output stacking impedance.

Optoelectronic characterization of laser diodes with different electrode structures

“…GaAs-based LDs, thanks to their characteristic high efficiency, compact dimensions and low cost are widely used in material processing, medical and beauty treatments and military applications (Pietrzak et al , 2018; Wang et al , 2021). Moreover, microelectronic devices made of GaAs materials play an important role in power amplifier for C-band applications (Liu et al , 2020) and monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) for millimeter-wave system (Guan et al , 2020).…”

An analytic method for parameter extraction of InP HBTs small-signal model

“…Recently, there has been increased interest in heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) because of their high-speed capability and high-power applications (Liu et al , 2020; Zhang et al , 2019a; Yang et al , 2018; Zhang et al , 2019b). Indium Phosphide (InP)/Indium Gallium Arsenide (InGaAs) HBTs are the dominant choice over Indium Gallium Phosphide/Gallium arsenide HBTs due to superior device performance and material properties (Shivan et al , 2018; Park et al , 2017; Zhang et al , 2019c; Nardmann et al , 2019).…”