G-band (140-220 GHz) and W-band (75-110 GHz) InP DHBT medium power amplifiers

Abstract

We report common-base medium power amplifiers designed for-band (140-220 GHz) and-band (75-110 GHz) in InP mesa double HBT technology. The common-base topology is preferred over common-emitter and common-collector topologies due to its superior high-frequency maximum stable gain (MSG). Base feed inductance and collector emitter overlap capacitance, however, reduce the common-base MSG. A single-sided collector contact reduces ce and, hence, improves the MSG. A single-stage common-base tuned amplifier exhibited 7-dB small-signal gain at 176 GHz. This amplifier demonstrated 8.7-dBm output power with 5-dB associated power gain at 172 GHz. A two-stage common-base amplifier exhibited 8.1-dBm output power with 6.3-dB associated power gain at 176 GHz and demonstrated 9.1-dBm saturated output power. Another two-stage common-base amplifier exhibited 11.6-dBm output power with an associated power gain of 4.5 dB at 148 GHz. In the-band, different designs of single-stage common-base power amplifiers demonstrated saturated output power of 15.1 dBm at 84 GHz and 13.7 dBm at 93 GHz. Index Terms-InP heterojunction bipolar transistor, millimeterwave amplifier, monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) amplifiers. I. INTRODUCTION W-BAND (75-110 GHz) and-band (140-220 GHz) amplifiers have applications in wide-band communication systems, atmospheric sensing, and automotive radar. The high mobility of InGaAs, high electron saturation velocity of InP, and submicrometer scaling result in wide-bandwidth transistors with high available gain in this frequency band. In a transferred substrate InP HBT process, 6.3-dB gain is reported at 175 GHz with a single-stage amplifier [1]. State-of-the-art results in InP high electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) technologies include a three-stage amplifier with 30-dB gain at 140 GHz [2], a three-stage amplifier with 12-15-dB gain from 160 to 190 GHz [3], and a three-stage power amplifier with 10-dB gain from 144 to 170 GHz [4].

Common-base multi-finger submicron InGaAs/InP double heterojunction bipolar transistor with fmax of 305GHz

“…InGaAs/InP HBTs have been widely used to fabricate the power amplifiers operating at millimeter band and the high-speed mixed-signal integrated circuits [1,2]. The frequency of the power amplifier fabricated by InGaAs/InP HBTs reaches as high as 200 GHz [1]. The operating frequency of the frequency divider is more than 150 GHz, which is the highest among all the technologies [2].…”

A 125–170 GHz wideband high-power amplifier using 0.5-µm InP DHBT

“…Lots of researches on InP HEMT and DHBT have been implemented these years, and many InP-based PAs aimed at the center frequency of 140 GHz [7,8,9,10,11] are reported. However, most of them mainly concentrate on higher output power, this may result in a poor flatness of power gain, which is significant for the practical bandwidth of transceiver in communication systems.…”

A 200 GHz Monolithic Integrated Power Amplifier in Metamorphic HEMT Technology

“…Entering the sub-millimeter-wave region, NGC recently reported 3 dBm of output power from a three-stage amplifier at 330 GHz [4]. Based on InP double hetero-junction bipolar transistor technology (DHBT) with its high breakdown voltages, a 176 GHz amplifier with 9.1 dBm saturated output power has been realized [5]. In this letter, we report a three-stage power amplifier MMIC based on a 100 nm metamorphic HEMT technology, achieving an output power of 9 dBm and 7 dBm at 192 and 200 GHz, respectively.…”